Stand at the Corner Where London Advertises Itself
Come up from the Underground at Piccadilly Circus and the first thing you meet is the light: a wall of screens on the corner building to the north, wrapping around the facade between Shaftesbury Avenue and Glasshouse Street. Advertising has lit this junction since 1908, when a Perrier sign went up; the bulbs gave way to neon, the neon to LED, and the screens have been dark only rarely — during the Second World War, after the deaths of Churchill and Diana, and through much of 2017 while the present curved display was installed. Stand on the south side and you have the whole picture at once: the screens to the north, the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain to the southwest, and six streets — Piccadilly, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, the Haymarket, Coventry Street and Glasshouse Street — converging on the spot where John Nash's Regent Street met the old road to Hyde Park Corner in 1819. Dickens the younger called Piccadilly the nearest thing London had to a Parisian boulevard; the comparison holds at its junction.
Anteros, Not Eros — and the Theatres Under Your Feet
The statue most people call Eros is the centrepiece of the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, erected in 1893 to honour the philanthropic work of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. The winged archer is Anteros, the god of selfless love — the popular name has simply stuck. The fountain has been moved more than once: taken away in 1922 so the tube station could be built beneath it, returned in 1931, removed again during the war and replaced by hoardings, brought back in 1948, and shifted to its present position at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue during the reconstruction of the late 1980s. It remains the natural place to arrange to meet someone.
Around the junction, look for the details most visitors walk past:
- The Criterion Theatre, a Victorian playhouse opened in 1874, largely underground beside the memorial and staging plays and musicals.
- The London Pavilion, one of the notable buildings ringing the Circus, and the corner building that has carried electric billboards since 1923.
- The Horses of Helios, a group of four dark bronze horses installed in the early 1990s during the renovation of the Criterion, with the Daughters of Helios — aluminium and gold leaf — on the building at 1 Jermyn Street.
- Inside the tube station, the "World Time Today" clock installed in the 1920s, its central strip showing the time around the planet, and the memorial to Frank Pick, the transport administrator, its sign lettered with eight human characteristics in gold.
How to Work the Circus Into Your Day
The junction is at its best after dark, when the screens do the work they were put there for; the West End's theatres empty into these streets late in the evening, and the lights are the reason the place is among the most photographed sights in London. Come in daylight if you want to read the buildings rather than the advertisements — the Criterion's facade, the curve of Regent Street, the fountain's aluminium figure. In winter, the Christmas illuminations along Regent Street begin here, making the Circus a natural halfway point on a walk through the West End lights.
Give it twenty minutes if you are passing through and an hour if you are settling in: the junction rewards standing still. Expect crowds — "it's like Piccadilly Circus" is what the British say about any crowded place — and expect scaffolding or fencing around the memorial at times when large crowds are anticipated, put there to protect the statue. The screens themselves are occasionally given over to something other than products: in 2002 Yoko Ono paid for John Lennon's line "Imagine all the people living life in peace" to be displayed there. Check what is showing before you assume it is selling you something.
What to Eat, Drink and Buy Within a Few Minutes' Walk
Piccadilly Circus is a gateway as much as a destination. Walk west along Piccadilly and you reach Fortnum & Mason, the food hall known for tea, preserves and Scotch eggs, with afternoon tea served in its Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon. Veeraswamy, the UK's oldest Indian restaurant, has served on Regent Street since 1926. Burlington Arcade, described as the first shopping arcade in the world, runs off Piccadilly in neoclassical style, and the Royal Academy of Arts sits at Burlington House — with the wooden prototype of Giles Gilbert Scott's K2 red telephone box standing outside it since 1924. Bookshops worth the detour include Hatchards and Waterstones Piccadilly, London's biggest bookstore. Along Regent Street you have Liberty and Hamleys, with Carnaby Street just off it; Soho's bars, restaurants and clubs begin immediately to the north.
Where to Go Next
Everything in the West End is close. Leicester Square and its cinemas are a few blocks up Coventry Street; Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden and St James's are all within walking distance, and the tube station below the plaza puts the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines at your disposal. Onward, consider the London Eye on the South Bank, Buckingham Palace in Westminster, the Tower of London by the Thames, Emirates Stadium to the north, Kensington Palace, or Madame Tussauds.
Start with a map of the six streets that meet here and pick the one you have not walked — Regent Street north toward Oxford Circus, Shaftesbury Avenue into Theatreland, or Piccadilly west past the arcades. The Circus has been a meeting place since 1819; treat it as one, and let it send you somewhere.