The cross of England with the sword of St Paul in one corner: the flag of the City, the ancient heart of London, comes from its medieval coat of arms.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with a 3:5 ratio, white, with a red cross that reaches all four edges. It is an armorial flag: the coat of arms of the City of London put onto cloth.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of London is the red Cross of St George on white, with a red sword in the upper corner next to the flagpole. It is actually not the flag of the whole city, but of the City: the oldest London, a ‘square mile’ that is today the district of the banks.
The City is the London that lay inside the Roman and medieval wall, and it still has its own government, the City of London Corporation. Since the 13th century it used St Paul as its symbol, its patron saint. Over time the figure of the saint was replaced by the sword with which, according to tradition, he was beheaded.
The coat of arms is first mentioned on 17 April 1381. That day it was decided to make a new seal, because the old one was no longer considered worthy of the city. The flag is that coat of arms put onto cloth, which is called an armorial flag.
It has not changed: it repeats the same coat of arms since the Middle Ages.
Red cross on white
the Cross of St George, patron of England. It is the English flag, which is also inside that of the United Kingdom.
Red sword
that of St Paul, patron of the City and of its cathedral, who died beheaded.
It has been said that the sword is the dagger with which the mayor William Walworth killed the rebel Wat Tyler. It cannot be: the coat of arms already existed in April 1381 and Tyler died in June of that year.
The same red cross on white takes up two of the four quarters of the flag of Barcelona, where it is the old sign of the city.
The City administers places outside its square mile, such as Tower Bridge, Hampstead Heath park or the animal reception centre at Heathrow airport, and its flag flies there too.
The coat of arms with the cross and the sword appeared in 2010 on a one-pound coin dedicated to London.
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Text based on the article “Flag of the City of London (Wikipedia en inglés)” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Greentubing, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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