Signs that once directed terrified Londoners to shelters are still visible around town. (Guy Aceto)

The whole city is a monument—a testament to the will of the people of London to survive a dark time, carry on, and ultimately, take the battle back to and overcome the enemy

On August 24, 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain, two German bombers, acting without orders, dropped their loads over the city of London. The Royal Air Force retaliated the next night with a strike on the Nazi capital, and Hitler, in a fit of pique, declared that London would be subjected to the full wrath of the German Luftwaffe. Over the next two months, beginning on September 7, an average of 165 bombers dropped 200 tons of bombs on the city each day. Raids continued regularly until May 1941, when the Eastern Front and Operation Barbarossa diverted Hitler's attention. By then, nearly a third of the city had been devastated and some 16,000 Londoners killed in what became known to many as simply "the Blitz."

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Londoners of today who lived through the Blitz can see evidence of it everywhere: in block after block of rebuilt buildings, some of them brilliant restorations, others obvious replacements. To the visitor interested in that dark time in London's history, the signs of devastation are less recognizable. But a walk through central London can still reveal the scars of those days; you just need to know where to look.

The Imperial War Museum is a good place to familiarize yourself with the story of London during the Blitz. The IWM is actually a series of five museums, but the outwardly drab main building, on the south side of the river Thames, is where we're headed. "The Blitz Experience," an interactive exhibit in the museum's World War II gallery, helps summon a feel for the time—albeit one without the stark terror. A guide, taking on the role of an air raid warden, escorts our small group of visitors from an air raid shelter through a bombed-out London street. He warns us of the dangers of unexploded bombs and ruptured gas lines. As we pass a truck set up to provide rescue workers and the public with a "spot of tea," our guide is keen to remind us that a portion of the provisions come courtesy of the United States, despite that country's then-neutral stance.

The "experience" is akin to negotiating a full-sized diorama complete with the noise of rescue and the drone of approaching bombers. It's dark and hard to see at times but you do get a sense of the chaos created by the nighttime raids, and of what life in London was like during the Blitz.

For a more elite view of wartime London, we'll next head to the Cabinet War Rooms, where Churchill and his War Cabinet met. The underground warren of mostly small, cramped rooms is located on the opposite side of the Thames from the Imperial War Museum, under what is now the Treasury Building, and is a quick walk from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

The entrance, while not original to the war, has the look of a sandbagged bunker, and leads to the complex of rooms where some 115 meetings of the War Cabinet were held over the course of the war. The smell of Churchill's cigars may be gone but the rooms are preserved as if he had just left and it is September 1940 all over again. I find the Map Room the most moving. A huge map covers one wall: look closely and you'll see a swath of thousands of tiny holes making a big, arcing shape across the Atlantic Ocean, the result of the pushpins that had once been used to carefully track the hundreds of convoys that were Great Britain's logistical lifeline.

A few blocks south, on Lord North Street, another striking visual representation of the period is all the more affecting because of its location: a nondescript brick wall on a nondescript side street. There you can still see a large S stenciled on the wall, with an arrow directing citizens to one of the many air raid shelters the city once held. Farther down the street, another sign painted on a wall shows the location of a vault under the pavement where Londoners could wait out an air raid. Keep your eyes open, and you'll spot more of these throughout the city.

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