A baker's oven on Pudding Lane burned down most of medieval London

The Great Fire of London broke out on 2 September 1666 in a bakery on Pudding Lane and burned for four days, destroying roughly 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches and old St Paul's Cathedral. It gutted the historic walled City of London but, by most accounts, killed remarkably few people. The rebuilding that followed, overseen partly by architect Christopher Wren, replaced a cramped medieval timber city with wider streets and brick construction.

— Samuel Pepys, Diary of Samuel Pepys — Diary entries, September 1666