Beautiful Streets

Streets, squares, mews and lanes. The most charming streetscapes in London. Some well known, some hidden gems.

Regent Street

One long curve of Portland stone, put up as a boundary and rebuilt as a single building.

Terraces

Union flags strung across Regent Street between the Portland stone frontages, the road curving away south — Union flags over Regent Street, looking down the curve.

A vintage double-decker bus on display below the giant columns of the Quadrant, Regent Street's curved end — An old bus below the Quadrant, the curved end of the street.

John Nash laid Regent Street out from 1814 to join the Prince Regent's house at the bottom to the park being made for him at the top. It was given a second job on the way: the line was drawn deliberately between the grand streets of Mayfair and the crowded ones of Soho, a wall of shopfronts to keep the two apart, which is why it bends where it does.

Almost nothing Nash built is left. The street was taken down and put up again in Portland stone between the 1890s and the 1920s, to one height and one cornice line, and the Crown Estate still owns the whole of it, which is why it has stayed that way. The effect is of one enormous building bent into a curve rather than a row of separate ones.

The best of it is the Quadrant at the southern end, where the street swings into Piccadilly Circus and the terrace turns with you.

Where: Regent Street, W1B
Nearest station: Oxford Circus · 4 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.