The Baltic Exchange is an attraction signposted in the City not least because of its centrality to London’s commercial history. From humble beginnings in the eighteenth century in coffee houses, the association of merchants and shippers came to dominate the commercial maritime world and became the physical home of shipbroking, the international trade of matching merchant cargoes with available space on freight ships. Its motto came to encapsulate the old-fashioned ethic of the City: “our word our bond”. Parts of the present building are available for hire for corporate functions and visits are possible by appointment. The former site now houses the Swiss Re tower, or ‘gherkin’.