Is the British Queen regnant/reigning King allowed into the City of London?
The only place in the country that the monarch cannot constitutionally enter is the House of Commons. Bearing in mind, of course, that the British constitution is unwritten, and that theoretically the Sovereign could indeed enter the House of Commons. The bar to entry is that Commons shows that it may debate without interference from the Crown. One could argue that the Sovereign could enter, and not precipitate a constitutional crisis if she were to remain completely silent the whole time. It’ll never happen, though. All Lords, Temporal and Spiritual, are excluded from there, and have been since the re-establishment of the monarchy under Charles II. Not quite true. Lords Temporal and Spiritual (i.e., members of the House of Lords; with the reform of the HoL, there seems to be a strong possibility that peers may be elected to either house) are now barred from sitting in Commons as Members, but may enter the chamber at will–simply look at the history of Prime Ministers, and you will see
As pointed out, the City of London, while in London, is a very small geographical parcel within London. It is kind of akin to downtown Manhattan, while being in New York, being a very small geographical parcel within New York. However, the City of London also has its own political structures and specifically designated borders, etc. Is London a city in the everyday sense of a large populous built-up area? Yes. Is the City of London a city in the everyday sense? Not really. It’s very small, although somewhat populous, and built-up.
It is sometimes asserted that the Lord Mayor may exclude the Sovereign from the City of London. The legend is based on the misinterpretation of the ceremony observed each time the Sovereign enters the City. At Temple Bar the Lord Mayor presents the City’s pearl-encrusted Sword of State to the Sovereign as a symbol of the latter’s overlordship. The Sovereign does not, as is often purported, wait for the Lord Mayor’s permission to enter the City. This time, however, Wikipedia is right, and the Queen’s website is wrong. The City has never been fully independent of the crown. Its right to self-government has always depended on royal authority, as laid down in a series of royal charters beginning with William the Conqueror in 1067. As Caroline Barron notes (in London in the Later Middle Ages, 2004), ‘the Crown .. always retained the power .. to take back all that had been conceded to the City and to govern it directly through appointed royal wardens who could collect and manage all the city
