Victoria Embankment in the context of "Queen Victoria Street, London"

The Palace of Whitehall – also spelled White Hall – at Westminster was the main residence of the English monarchs from 1530 until 1698, when most of its structures, with the notable exception of Inigo Jones's Banqueting House of 1622, were destroyed by fire. Henry VIII moved the royal residence to Whitehall after the old royal apartments at the nearby Palace of Westminster were themselves destroyed by fire. Although the Whitehall palace has not survived, the area where it was located is still called Whitehall and has remained a centre of the British government.

Whitehall was at one time the largest palace in Europe, with more than 1,500 rooms, before itself being overtaken by the expanding Palace of Versailles, which was to reach 2,400 rooms. At its most expansive, the palace extended over much of the area bordered by Northumberland Avenue in the north; to Downing Street and nearly to Derby Gate in the south; and from roughly the elevations of the current buildings facing Horse Guards Road in the west, to the then banks of the River Thames in the east (the construction of Victoria Embankment has since reclaimed more land from the Thames)—a total of about 23 acres (9.3 ha). It was about 710 yards (650 m) from Westminster Abbey.

The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, and three outbreaks of cholera before the Great Stink were blamed on the ongoing problems with the river.

The smell, and fears of its possible effects, prompted action by the national and local administrators who had been considering possible solutions to the problem. The authorities accepted a proposal from the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to move the effluent eastwards along a series of interconnecting sewers that sloped towards outfalls beyond the metropolitan area. Work on high-, mid- and low-level systems for the new Northern and Southern Outfall Sewers started at the beginning of 1859 and lasted until 1875. To aid the drainage, pumping stations were built to lift the sewage from lower levels into higher pipes. Two of the more ornate stations, Abbey Mills in Stratford and Crossness on the Erith Marshes, with architectural designs by the consultant engineer, Charles Driver, are listed for protection by English Heritage. Bazalgette's plan introduced the three embankments to London in which the sewers ran: the Victoria, Chelsea and Albert Embankments.

Somerset House is a large neoclassical building complex situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadrangle is built on the site of a Tudor palace ("Old Somerset House") originally belonging to the Duke of Somerset. The present Somerset House was designed by Sir William Chambers, begun in 1776, and was further extended with Victorian era outer wings to the east and west in 1831 and 1856 respectively. The site of Somerset House stood directly on the River Thames until the Victoria Embankment was built in the late 1860s.

The great Georgian era structure was built to be a grand public building housing various government and public-benefit society offices. Its present tenants are a mixture of various organisations, generally centred around the arts and education.

Fire investigation (sometimes referred to as origin and cause investigation) is the analysis of fire-related incidents. After firefighters extinguish a fire, an investigation is launched to determine the origin and cause of the fire or explosion. These investigations can occur in two stages. The first stage is an investigation of the scene of the fire to establish its origin and cause. The second step is to conduct laboratory examination on the retrieved samples. Investigations of such incidents require a systematic approach and knowledge of fire science.

The Temple is an area or precinct of the City of London surrounding Temple Church. It is one of the main legal districts in London and a notable centre for English law, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It consists of the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple, which are two of the four Inns of Court and act as local authorities in place of the City of London Corporation as to almost all structures and functions. Before the establishment of these Inns of Court, the Temple area was the precinct given to the Knights Templar (who built the church) until they were suppressed in 1312, but the area has retained the name from that time. It became a centre of the legal profession soon afterwards.

The Royal Courts of Justice and Temple Bar are just to the north and Temple tube station borders to the southwest in the City of Westminster. The precinct is roughly bounded by the River Thames (the Victoria Embankment) to the south, Surrey Street to the west, the Strand and Fleet Street to the north and Carmelite Street and Whitefriars Street to the east. The intervening Essex Street, two streets east of Surrey Street, is the traditional western boundary, beyond which are affluent office/hotel and residential blocks, spread over large three street blocks which are closest to the station.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), commonly known as the Metropolitan Police, Met Police, or the "Met", is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and crime prevention within Greater London. In addition, it is responsible for specialised tasks throughout the United Kingdom, such as dealing with counter-terrorism throughout the UK, and the protection of certain individuals, including the monarch, royal family, governmental officials, and other designated figures. It is also referred to as an eponym as "Scotland Yard" or "the Yard", after the location of its original headquarters in Great Scotland Yard, Whitehall, in the 19th century. The Met is presently headquartered at New Scotland Yard, on the Victoria Embankment.

The main geographical area covered by the Met, the Metropolitan Police District, consists of the 32 London boroughs, and excludes the square mile of the City of London – a largely non-residential and financial district, overseen by the City of London Police. As the force responsible for the majority of the UK's capital, the Met has significant responsibilities and unique challenges, such as protecting 164 foreign embassies and High Commissions, policing London City and Heathrow airports, protecting the Palace of Westminster, and managing a higher volume of protests and events than any other British police force, with 3,500 such events in 2016.

The Thames Embankment is an embankment that was built as part of the London Main Drainage (1859-1875) by the Metropolitan Board of Works, a pioneering Victorian civil engineering project which housed interceptor sewers, which collect the water from many sewer lines, as well as roads and underground railways, and also embanked the River Thames. Embankment is a form of land reclamation, and the project consisted of the Victoria Embankment and Chelsea Embankment on the north side and the Albert Embankment on the south. Designed by the Chief Engineer Joseph Bazalgette, it modernised London's infrastructure, improving public health, mobility, and the image of the British capital.

Embankment is a London Underground station in the City of Westminster, known by various names during its history. It is served by four lines: Bakerloo, Circle, District and Northern. On the Bakerloo line and the Charing Cross branch of the Northern line, the station is between Charing Cross and Waterloo stations. On the Circle and District lines, it is between Westminster and Temple stations. It is in London fare zone 1. The station has two entrances, one on Victoria Embankment and the other on Villiers Street. The station is adjacent to Victoria Embankment Gardens and is close to Charing Cross station, Embankment Pier, Hungerford Bridge, Cleopatra's Needle, the Royal Air Force Memorial, the Savoy Chapel and Savoy Hotel and the Playhouse and New Players Theatres.

The station is in two parts: sub-surface platforms opened on 30 May 1870 by the District Railway (DR) as part of the company's extension of the Inner Circle eastwards from Westminster to Blackfriars and deep-level platforms opened in 1906 by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR) and 6 April 1914 by the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR). A variety of underground and main line services have operated over the sub-surface tracks and the CCE&HR part of the station was reconstructed in the 1920s.