London was still officially bounded by Ludgate and Newgate on the west; Aldersgate, Cripplesgate, Moorgate, and Bishopsgate on the north, and Aldgate on the east. Before the Great Fire, the suburbs didn't extend beyond the modern Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross Road. After the fire, the city moved further west, and west became more fashionable.

In the city, the streets for shopping were Fleet Street, Ludgate, and Cheapside. Items available included pottery, musical instruments, tobacco pipes, barometers, clocks, guns, lacquered cabinets, mathematical instruments, haberdashery, gold and silver-ware.

Streets were roughly paved, ditches were not railed off, and there were many accidents with coaches falling over, occasionally killing pedestrians. Pavements were narrow or non-existent.

The Great Fire started on 2nd September 1666 in a bakehouse in Pudding Lane and did not burn itself out until the 6th.

From John Evelyn's diary:

The congflagaration was so universal, and the people so astonished that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirr'd to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their goods; such a strange consternation there was upon them, so it burned both in breadth and length, the Churches, Public Halls, Exchange, Hospitals, Monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house and street to street, at great distances one from another; for the heat with a long set of fair and warm weather had even ignited the air and prepared the materials to conceive the fire, which devour'd after an incredible manner houses, furniture and everything.

The Great Fire of London left its mark on the city for at least twenty years - throughout much of the 1670s and 80s, many important landmarks were still being rebuilt.

Christopher Wren submitted his designs for a new St. Paul's in 1669; the actual building work began in 1675. The building didn't open until 1697 and wasn't declared finished until 1711.