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Piccadilly Circus Review

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Piccadilly Circus

Address: St. James's, London, W1J ODA | Map It

Category: Neighborhoods/Streets
Location: St. James's and Mayfair

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Fodor's Review:

Although it may seem like a "circus" with its traffic and the camera-clickers clustered around the steps of Eros, the name refers to the five major roads that radiate from it. The origins of "Piccadilly" are from the humble tailor in the Strand named Robert Baker who sold picadils—a stiff ruffled collar all the rage in courtly circles—and built a house with the proceeds. Snobs dubbed his new-money mansion Piccadilly Hall, and the name stuck.

Eros, London's favorite statue and symbol of the Evening Standard newspaper, is not in fact the Greek god of erotic love at all, but the Angel of Christian Charity, commissioned in 1893 from the young sculptor Alfred Gilbert as a memorial to the philanthropic Earl of Shaftesbury (the angel's bow and arrow are a sweet allusion to the earl's name). Gilbert cast the statue he called his "missile of kindness" in the novel medium of aluminum. Unfortunately, he spent most of his £8,000 fee ensuring the bronze fountain beneath was cast to his specifications. Already in debt, he eventually went bankrupt and fled the country. (Not to worry—he was knighted in the end.) Beneath the modern bank of neon advertisements are some of the most elegant Edwardian-era buildings in town.