Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Covent Garden
Covent Garden
has come full circle: what started out in the seventeenth century as
London's first luxury neighbourhood is once more an aspirational place to live, work
and shop. Boosted by buskers and street entertainers, the piazza is now one of London's
major tourist attractions, and the streets to the north - in particular, Long Acre, Neal
Street and Floral Street - are home to fashionable clothes and shoe shops.
Most visitors are happy enough simply to wander around watching the street life,
having a coffee and doing a bit of shopping, but there are a couple of specific sights
worth picking out. One of the old market buildings houses the enjoyable
London
Transport Museum
, while another serves as the public foyer for the
Royal Opera House
and boasts a great roof terrace overlooking the piazza.
The piazza
Covent Garden's
piazza
- London's oldest planned square - was laid out in the 1630s,
when the Earl of Bedford commissioned Inigo Jones to design a series of graceful
Palladian-style arcades based on the main square in Livorno, Tuscany, where Jones had
helped build the cathedral. Initially it was a great success, its novelty value alone
attracting a plutocratic clientele, but over time the tone of the place fell as the
market
(set up in the earl's back garden) expanded and theatres, coffee houses and brothels
began to proliferate.
By the onset of the nineteenth century, the market dominated the area, and so in the
1830s a proper market hall was built in the middle of the piazza in the Greek Revival
style. A glass roof was added in the late Victorian era, but otherwise the building stayed
unaltered until the market's closure in 1974, and only public protests averted yet
another o
ce development. Instead, the elegant market hall and its environs were
restored to house shops, restaurants and arts-and-crafts stalls. In its early days, the area
had an alternative hippy vibe, a legacy of the area's numerous squats. Nowadays,
upmarket chain stores occupy much of the market hall and the arcades, with the
world's largest Apple Store, on the north side of the piazza, a sign of the how far the
area has come from its origins.
8
St Paul's Church
Covent Garden Piazza • Mon-Fri 8.30am-5pm, Sat times vary, Sun 9am-1pm •
T
020 7836 5221,
W
actorschurch.org •
!
Covent Garden or Leicester Square
Covent Garden piazza is overlooked from the west by
St Paul's Church
. The Earl of
Bedford allegedly told Inigo Jones to make St Paul's no fancier than a barn, to which
COFFEE HOUSES AND BROTHELS
By the eighteenth century the piazza was known as “the great square of Venus”, home to
dozens of gambling dens, bawdy houses and so-called “bagnios”. Some bagnios were plain
Turkish baths, but most doubled as
brothels
, where courtesans stood in the window and,
according to one contemporary, “in the most impudent manner invited passengers from the
theatres into the houses”.
London's most famous
coffee houses
were concentrated here, too, attracting writers such as
Sheridan, Dryden and Aphra Behn. The rich and famous frequented places like the piazza's
Shakespeare's Head
, whose cook made the best turtle soup in town, and whose head waiter, John
Harrison, was believed to be the author of the anonymously published “Who's Who of Whores”,
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies
, which sold over a quarter of a million copies in its day.
The
Rose Tavern
, on Russell Street (immortalized in Hogarth's
Rake's Progress
), was one of the
oldest brothels in Covent Garden - Pepys mentions “frigging with Doll Lane” at the
Rose
in his
diary of 1667 - and specialized in “Posture Molls”, who engaged in flagellation and striptease,
and were deemed a cut above the average whore. Food was apparently excellent, too, and
despite the frequent brawls, men of all classes, from royalty to ru
ans, made their way there.
