Description
Piccadilly Circus is the junction in the heart of London's West End where Regent Street, Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue meet: a huge curved screen of lights, a fountain with a winged archer and crowds at any hour, on the edge of Soho and Theatreland.
It is less a sight to study than a place to feel the city's pulse, and a natural starting point: Leicester Square, Soho's restaurants and the theaters of Shaftesbury Avenue are a few steps away.
The illuminated signs are what everyone comes to see. Since 2017 the ads have run on a single giant curved screen, high on the building at the north-western corner. Every evening, for a few minutes, it also shows short works commissioned from artists.
On one corner stands the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, put up in 1893 for Lord Shaftesbury, a Victorian philanthropist and social reformer. It stood in the middle of the junction until the 1980s, when works on the square moved it to the side.
Around the square, the Criterion Theatre on the south side has staged comedies since the 19th century, and the London Pavilion, a former music hall, has carried electric billboards on its façade since 1923. Underneath it all runs the Tube station, opened in 1906.
The name goes back to a tailor. In the early 1600s Robert Baker was famous for selling piccadills, the stiff collars then in fashion, and his house became known as Piccadilly Hall. "Circus" is Latin for circle: a round open space where roads meet.
The junction was laid out in 1819 with John Nash's new Regent Street, and lost its round shape in the 1880s, when Shaftesbury Avenue was cut through. The first illuminated sign, for Perrier, lit up in 1908.
The lights go dark only on rare occasions, such as the deaths of Winston Churchill and of Princess Diana. And the winged archer on the fountain? Almost everyone calls him Eros. He is actually his brother Anteros.
The British say a busy place is "like Piccadilly Circus", and that whoever waits here long enough will bump into everyone they know. In 1944 the Allied fleet gathering in the Channel for D-Day used the same name for its meeting point.
It is less a sight to study than a place to feel the city's pulse, and a natural starting point: Leicester Square, Soho's restaurants and the theaters of Shaftesbury Avenue are a few steps away.
The illuminated signs are what everyone comes to see. Since 2017 the ads have run on a single giant curved screen, high on the building at the north-western corner. Every evening, for a few minutes, it also shows short works commissioned from artists.
On one corner stands the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, put up in 1893 for Lord Shaftesbury, a Victorian philanthropist and social reformer. It stood in the middle of the junction until the 1980s, when works on the square moved it to the side.
Around the square, the Criterion Theatre on the south side has staged comedies since the 19th century, and the London Pavilion, a former music hall, has carried electric billboards on its façade since 1923. Underneath it all runs the Tube station, opened in 1906.
The name goes back to a tailor. In the early 1600s Robert Baker was famous for selling piccadills, the stiff collars then in fashion, and his house became known as Piccadilly Hall. "Circus" is Latin for circle: a round open space where roads meet.
The junction was laid out in 1819 with John Nash's new Regent Street, and lost its round shape in the 1880s, when Shaftesbury Avenue was cut through. The first illuminated sign, for Perrier, lit up in 1908.
The lights go dark only on rare occasions, such as the deaths of Winston Churchill and of Princess Diana. And the winged archer on the fountain? Almost everyone calls him Eros. He is actually his brother Anteros.
The British say a busy place is "like Piccadilly Circus", and that whoever waits here long enough will bump into everyone they know. In 1944 the Allied fleet gathering in the Channel for D-Day used the same name for its meeting point.