Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Along with neighbouring St James's and Marylebone,
Mayfair
emerged in the
eighteenth century as one of London's first real residential suburbs. Sheep and cattle
were driven off the land by the area's big landowners (the largest of whom were the
Grosvenor family, whose head is the Duke of Westminster, Britain's richest man) to
make way for London's first major planned development: a web of brick-and-stucco
terraces and grid-plan streets feeding into a trio of grand, formal squares, with mews
and stables round the back. The name comes from the infamous fifteen-day fair, which
bit the dust in 1764 after the newly ensconced wealthy residents complained of the
“drunkenness, fornication, gaming and lewdness”. Mayfair quickly began to attract
aristocratic London away from hitherto fashionable Covent Garden and Soho, and set
the westward trend for upper-middle-class migration.
Piccadilly Circus
Tacky and congested it may be, but for many visitors, Piccadilly Circus is up there with
Trafalgar Square as a candidate for London's city centre. A much-altered product of
Nash's grand 1812
Regent Street
plan, and now a major bottleneck, with tra
c from
Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue and Regent Street all converging, it's by no means a
picturesque place, and is probably best seen at night, when the spread of illuminated
signs (a feature since the Edwardian era) gives it a touch of Times Square dazzle, and
when the human tra
c flow is at its most frenetic.
As well as being the gateway to the West End, this is also prime tourist territory, thanks
mostly to the celebrated Shaftesbury Memorial, popularly known as
Eros
. The fountain's
aluminium archer is one of London's top tourist attractions, a status that ba
es all who
live here - when it was first unveiled in 1893, it was so unpopular that the sculptor,
Alfred Gilbert, lived in self-imposed exile for the next thirty years. The figure depicted is
not Eros, but his lesser-known brother Anteros, who was the god of requited love,
although in this case he commemorates the selfless philanthropic love of the Earl of
Shaftesbury, a Bible-thumping social reformer who campaigned against child labour.
Behind Eros, it's worth popping in to
The Criterion
restaurant, at no. 224 Piccadilly,
just for a drink, so you can soak in probably the most spectacular Victorian interior in
London, with its Byzantine-style gilded mosaic ceiling.
3
Trocadero
Piccadilly Circus • Daily 10am-midnight, Fri & Sat until 1am •
T
020 7439 1719,
W
londontrocadero.com •
!
Piccadilly Circus
Just east of the Circus,
Trocadero
was originally an opulent restaurant, from 1896 until
its closure in 1965. Since then, millions have been poured into this glorified
amusement arcade, casino and multiplex cinema, in an unsuccessful attempt to find a
winning formula. Much of the building is currently being gutted and redeveloped to
include London's first Tokyo-style pod hotel, with over 580 windowless rooms.
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Piccadilly Circus • Daily 10am-10.30pm • £25 •
T
020 3238 0022,
W
ripleyslondon.com •
!
Piccadilly Circus
Next door to Trocadero, in what was once the London Pavilion music hall, is the world's
largest branch of
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
, which bills itself as an odditorium. It's half
waxworks, half old-fashioned Victorian freak show, with a mirror maze and laser maze
thrown in for good measure. Delights on display include shrunken heads and dinosaur
eggs, a chewing gum sculpture of the Fab Four and Tower Bridge rendered in 264,345
matchsticks. Book online to save a few pounds off the stratospheric admission charge.
Regent Street
Regent Street
was drawn up by John Nash in 1812 as both a luxury shopping street
and a triumphal way between George IV's (now demolished) Carlton House and
