| Piccadilly Circus (picture by Peter Watts) |  |
Piccadilly Circus
Photographer Description of Piccadilly Circus
This panorama shows one of the most iconic parts of London, Piccadilly circus. In the panoramic image are the famous Eros statue, behind which rise huge neon advertising hoardings. This is a very busy underground station and road junction.Piccadilly Circus - Further Information
Piccadilly Circus is in the very heart of the West End of London. It is a major junction close to Leicester Square and links Hyde Park Corner, Oxford Circus and Trafalgar Square. 8 lanes of traffic feed into Piccadilly Circus from Piccadilly and Regent Street. Traffic leaves via Regent Street (heading north), Shaftesbury Avenue or the Haymarket. The origins of the circus date from the 1620s and the time of the horse and cart, it is struggling to cope. At that time it connected Piccadilly to Pickadilly Hall. In this hall worked merchant famous for his collars, or piccadills. It is from this that Piccadilly was named. When John Nash built Regent Street 1819 the meeting point of the two was called Piccadilly Circus.Apart from the traffic the area is noted for several other things. First Piccadilly Circus is the name of the local underground station (opened 1906). Piccadilly Station, buried directly beneath Piccadilly Circus, is as busy as the road above, with numerous exit points disgorging visitors by the elevator load continuously. Piccadilly Circus also has a huge neon advertising billboard on the corner of Regent Street and Shaftesbury Avenue which continuously enthusing about the delights of fast food and fizzy drinks. Thankfully this mode of advertising has not been permitted to spread beyond into the rest of London.
Piccadilly Circus is also famous for the statue Eros, which stands in the south, pedestrianised side of the circus. The statue was built as a memorial to the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, who was a well known Christian with a keen concern for social justice. Among his achievements were the promotion of several Acts of Paliament forcing the improvement of working conditions, and the welfare and education of children (he formed the Ragged Schools which provided education for at least 300,000 children in London alone between 1840 and 1881).
Ironically Westminster decided to build, in honour of this Christian reformer, a statue to a Greek god Anteros, brother of Eros. It was renamed the Angel of Christian Charity after some comment, but the name never caught on, and then became known as Eros, thus seeming to celebrate the surrounding entertainment and red light areas of the West End and Soho. The statue is one of the icons of London, and used by the Evening Standard, London's daily newspaper.
Travel Directions and Getting There:
Piccadilly Circus (Bakerloo, Piccadilly lines)