Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
THE SWISS CORNER
For no particularly good reason, the area in the northwest corner of Leicester Square has
a Swiss theme to it. The impetus was the building of the Swiss Centre - a sort of trade
centre-cum-tourist of ce - in 1968 and the renaming of the area as Swiss Court. After forty
years of alpine theming, the much unloved Swiss Centre was finally demolished in 2008,
leaving behind a slightly surreal Swiss glockenspiel . This tall steel structure is topped by a
Swiss railway clock and features a glass drum decorated with the 26 cantonal flags which
lower on the hour (Mon-Fri noon & 5-8pm, Sat & Sun 2-4pm), to sound a 27-bell carillon, thus
revealing a procession of Helvetic cows and peasants making their way up the mountain.
biblical reliefs. The main point of interest within the unusual circular interior is
the Chapelle de la Vierge Marie, which contains a series of simple frescoes of the
Annunciation, Crucifixion and Assumption by Jean Cocteau from 1960 and an altar
mosaic of the Nativity by Boris Anrep (originally covered by a new panel by Cocteau
much to Anrep's annoyance).
Chinatown
Hemmed in between Leicester Square and Shaftesbury Avenue, Chinatown 's self-
contained jumble of shops , cafés and restaurants makes up one of London's most
distinct ethnic enclaves. Only a minority of the capital's Chinese live in the three small
blocks of Chinatown, with its ersatz touches - telephone kiosks rigged out as pagodas
and formal entrances or paifang - yet the area remains a focus for the community, a
place to do business or the weekly shopping, celebrate a wedding or just meet up on
Sundays for dim sum. Most Londoners come to Chinatown simply to eat, but if the
mood takes you, you can easily while away several hours sorting through the Chinese
trinkets, ceramics and ornaments in the various arts and crafts shops, or amassing the
perfect ingredients for a demon stir-fry.
The first Chinese immigrants were sailors who arrived here from the late
eighteenth century onwards on the ships of the East India Company. London's first
Chinatown grew up around the docks at Limehouse and eventually boasted over
thirty Chinese shops and restaurants. Predominantly male, this closed community
achieved a quasi-mythical status in Edwardian minds as a hotbed of criminal dives
and opium dens, a reputation exploited in Sax Rohmer's novels (later made into
films) featuring the evil Doctor Fu Manchu. Wartime bomb damage, postwar
demolition and protectionist union laws all but destroyed Limehouse Chinatown.
However, following the Communist takeover in China, a new wave of Chinese
refugees began to buy up cheap property around Gerrard Street , eventually
establishing the nucleus of today's Chinatown.
Charing Cross Road
Created in the 1880s as part of the Victorians' slum clearance drive, Charing Cross Road
has historically always been liberally peppered with bookshops . One of the first to open
here, in 1906, was Foyles , a vast book emporium, now at nos. 107-109, where Éamon
de Valera, George Bernard Shaw, Walt Disney and Arthur Conan Doyle were all once
regular customers. Once famous for its antiquated system for selling books that
required customers to queue three times, it's now a much more vibrant place, with a
busy café and regular live jazz and classical music gigs.
Two of the nicest places for secondhand-book browsing are Cecil Court and St Martin's
Court , connecting the southern end of Charing Cross Road and St Martin's Lane.
These short, civilized, late-Victorian paved alleys boast specialist bookshops, such as
the Italian Bookshop and Watkins Books, home of the occult, plus various antiquarian
dealers selling modern first editions, old theatre posters, coins and notes, cigarette
cards, maps and children's books.
 
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