London - Covent Garden Travel Guides | London | Sub Regions | London - Covent Garden

Covent Garden has been attracting traders, entertainers, their customers and audiences for at least 300 years but it only became a respectable tourist hotspot about 30 years ago, a fairly successful transformation of one of the oldest meeting places in the West End into one of the youngest. Thankfully it’s still largely free of the depressing tat peddled around Leicester Square. The focal point is still the building that once housed London’s largest fruit ‘n’ veg market before it moved out to Nine Elms in 1974. Now an impressive piazza, it still bears a faint flavour of those bustling times thanks to its converted Victorian covered market and the crowds that flock here day and night to shop, eat, drink and enjoy a pleasant place away from all the traffic. North of Long Acre, what were once narrow streets of warehouses and slums have experienced a boom in youth-orientated shops and bars, led by long-established crowd-pullers like the Donmar Warehouse theatre and Neal’s Yard wholefood hippy enclave.

Sights

Box office, T 020-7304 4000, http://www.royalopera.org. M Covent Garden.

To the east of the piazza, the Royal Opera House reopened to great acclaim after its multi-million pound redevelopment. Open to the general public throughout the day, it features a terrace overlooking the piazza and the massive refurbished Floral Hall provides a soaring space in which to enjoy a coffee or light meal.

T 020-7836 5221, http://www.actorschurch.org. Mon-Fri 0900-1630. M Covent Garden.

The west side of the piazza is dominated by the classical portico of St Paul’s Church, a 17th-century box designed by Inigo Jones that has long been known as the actors’ church thanks to the plaques inside commemorating bygone stars of the stage and screen. The portico on the piazza forms the backdrop to regular street theatre events of widely varying quality throughout the year.

Covent Garden.

On the south side, the Jubilee Market is another covered market with a much lower-rent selection of clothing and jewellery stalls as well as some reasonable snack stops. Things improve here on Mondays when an antiques market sets up shop and at weekends when craftworkers arrive with their wares.

Russell St, T 020-7943 4700. Tue-Sun 1000-1800, last entry 1730. Free. M Covent Garden.

Appropriately enough, given the proximity of the Royal Opera House and the Drury Lane Theatre Royal (backstage tours available, the capital’s theatre museum houses a cornucopia of eye-catching exhibits, antique masks, wigs, costumes and memorabilia. Special exhibitions include The Redgraves, the story of a theatrical dynasty, and The West End: a Great Night Out, charting the spectacular history of the world’s most vibrant stages. There’s also an impressive video archive of never-to-be-repeated performances, which can be seen on application in advance.

Great Queen St, T 020-7381 9811. Mon-Fri by guided 1-hr tours at 1100, 1200, 1400, 1500. Free. M Covent Garden.

Constructed in the 1920s and 30s, this massive art deco building is the third HQ of the United Grand Lodge of Freemasonry on this site. The museum contains all kinds of Masonic regalia, clocks, watches and other artefacts, while the tours take in the Grand Master’s Robing Room, the Shrine, and also the Grand Temple, a spectacular edifice boasting massive brass doors and an extraordinary mosaic ceiling.

Travel Guides | London | Sub Regions | London - Covent Garden
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