Covent Garden
A street stage since 1662 — even the buskers have to audition for their spot.
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Inigo Jones laid out London's first modern square here in 1630. The fruit-and-veg market that filled it for three centuries left for Nine Elms in 1974, and Charles Fowler's 1830 hall reopened as covered shops and cafes in 1980 — leaving a rare piece of theatrical old London you can walk straight through.
What to look for
- St Paul's, the 'Actors' Church' (built 1633, consecrated 1638), faces the piazza — where Samuel Pepys's diary logged the earliest recorded mention of a Punch and Judy show in Britain, in May 1662.
- The street performers aren't random — they audition with the site's owners for an allocated slot, so any act you catch is vetted.
- Charles Fowler's 1830 neoclassical hall, built to corral the market's disorderly wooden stalls.
Two covered markets run here — the Apple Market in Fowler's 1830 hall and the Jubilee Market in Jubilee Hall (1904), on the south side of the square — so it holds up rain or shine.
Covent Garden is one of 40 sights worth the detour in London, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the London pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in London
- British MuseumThe room where a dead language got its voice back — and you walk in for free.
- Buckingham PalaceThe balcony where a whole country turns up to watch a family wave — with 775 rooms behind it.
- Westminster AbbeyNearly every English monarch since 1066 has been crowned on the same worn patch of floor.
- Big BenThe clang in a thousand establishing shots comes from a cracked bell that's rung slightly off-key since 1859.
- Tower of LondonWilliam the Conqueror's keep turned royal prison, where two queens lost their heads and the Crown Jewels still sit under guard.
- Tower BridgeA Victorian drawbridge dressed as a Gothic castle, its roadway still splitting open for passing ships.