Guards Crimean War Memorial

Standing at the junction of Regent Street and Pall Mall, the Guards Crimean War Memorial marks one of the defining conflicts of the 19th century. The Crimean War, fought between 1853 and 1856, saw Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire push back against Russian expansion in the Black Sea region. It was one of the first wars to use railways and the telegraph, which transformed the speed and coordination of military operations in ways no one had seen before.

The memorial was sculpted by John Bell and honors the British guards who died or were wounded in the fighting. But the monument tells a broader story too, because two additional statues stand alongside it.

Florence Nightingale, depicted nearby in a statue by Arthur George Walker, was a nurse who arrived at the Crimean frontlines and found soldiers dying not from battle wounds, but from infections and neglect. She overhauled the medical care on the ground, and in 1860 founded Britain's first professional nursing school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London.

Sidney Herbert, Secretary of War and a personal friend of Nightingale, made her deployment possible. His statue, crafted by John Henry Foley, stands here as a reminder that behind every world-changing figure, there is usually someone who quietly opened the door.