Covent Garden

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Covent Garden

SQUARE, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

WRITTEN BY: 

• The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Covent-Garden-square-London

Covent Garden, square in the City of Westminster, London. It lies just northwest of the Strand. For more than 300 years it held the principal fruit, flower, and vegetable market of the metropolis. Adjacent to the former market site stands the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), home of Britain’s oldest national opera and ballet companies.

Covent Garden: Royal Opera HouseRoyal Opera House, Covent Garden, City of Westminster, London.Tagishsimon

Originally a convent garden owned by the Benedictines of Westminster, the site was developed by the 4th earl of Bedford as the cities of London and Westminster grew together along the north bank of the River Thames. It was laid out in the 1630s as a “piazza,” or residential square (the first of its kind in London), to the design of Inigo Jones. Surrounded on three sides by tall houses with an arcaded street floor, the square was bounded on the west by the low, solemn-porticoed St. Paul’s Church.

Covent Garden Market operated informally for many years before it was established “forever” by Charles II in 1670. It was rebuilt and reorganized in 1830, and in 1974 it moved to a new, more spacious market site south of the River Thames at Nine Elms, Wandsworth. The 19th-century Flower Market Building was refurbished in the early 1980s and now includes a variety of shops and attractions, including the London Transport Museum.