PICCADILLY CIRCUS

Description

Essentials about Piccadilly Circus in brief

Piccadilly Circus, along with Trafalgar Square, is probably the most famous public square in London. As a road junction connecting Shaftesbury Avenue, Haymarket, Coventry Street, Regent Street and Lower Regent Street, Piccadilly Street and Glasshouse Street, the Circus is also one of the busiest places in the whole city.

Piccadilly Circus as the center of London

But it’s not only cars that bustle here, but also lots of people. Due to its proximity to numerous shopping and entertainment areas, such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square and SoHo, Piccadilly Circus is a popular meeting place for both locals and tourists. During the time of colonization and the great British Empire, Piccadilly Circus was often referred to as the “center of the world”. By the way, Piccadilly Circus has absolutely nothing to do with a circus. In the architectural sense, a “circus” is a round, public area at a street crossing or a kind of traffic circle, but without a built center island. Today, however, Piccadilly is no longer recognizable as a circus.

The billboards and Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain

The square is also world-famous for its giant billboards. Since 2017, these no longer consist of individual LED displays, but of a curved video wall that can be played over the entire surface or by individual segments. The new advertising wall is the largest LED 4K video wall in Europe.

The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain has been standing in the middle of the square for a little longer time than the video wall. It commemorates the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, a philanthropist who worked to improve living conditions in London’s slums. By the way, the naked figure on the fountain does not represent Eros, but the angel of Christian charity.