Covent Garden

London's first square, a market building of 1830, and more theatres within a few streets than anywhere else.

The name is a corruption of convent garden: this was the walled garden of Westminster Abbey, farmed by monks from about 1200. After the Reformation it went to the Earls of Bedford, and in 1630 the fourth Earl asked Inigo Jones to build something Italian on it. What Jones laid out, a piazza with arcaded houses on two sides and a church on the third, was the first square in London and the model for every estate that followed. A fruit and vegetable market started in it by accident around 1654, was regulated by Parliament in 1813, and grew until it was feeding the city and choking it: the wholesale trade finally moved out to Nine Elms in 1974. What it left behind is Charles Fowler's market building of 1830, which nearly came down and is now full of shops. The theatres arrived with the market and stayed. The Theatre Royal on Drury Lane has been putting on plays since 1663 and is the oldest working theatre in London; the Royal Opera House next door began in 1732 and is where the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera are based. St Paul's, Jones's church on the square, is known as the actors' church and is lined with memorials to them. Samuel Pepys watched the first Punch and Judy show in England in front of its portico in May 1662, and there has been a busker on that spot most days since.