Living in Covent Garden

Covent Garden is theatreland and a tourist destination first, and a place to live second. The old market building and piazza, the Royal Opera House, street performers, dozens of theatres and hundreds of restaurants and shops draw crowds every day of the year, from morning to late at night.

Its residential community is nonetheless real and has a notable history. In the 1970s, when the fruit and vegetable market moved out, plans to demolish much of the area were defeated by a local campaign, and that fight left behind housing co-operatives and housing association homes that still house long-standing residents. Today most flats are above shops and restaurants, in mansion blocks or in converted warehouses, and new private flats are among the most expensive in London.

Some pockets offer relative calm. Seven Dials and Neal's Yard, while busy, are more boutique than the piazza, and the streets towards Holborn and around Drury Lane are quieter at night. Otherwise, noise from crowds, performers, deliveries and late-closing venues is part of daily life, and green space is almost non-existent; the Victoria Embankment Gardens and the river are the nearest open spaces.

Covent Garden station on the Piccadilly line is small and served only by lifts, and at busy times it is often quicker to walk to Leicester Square, Holborn or Tottenham Court Road; almost everything else in the West End is reachable on foot. Charing Cross and Waterloo, a short walk away, offer rail connections south. Covent Garden suits people who work in theatre, hospitality or the West End, who want to live at the centre of London's cultural life and accept high rents, small flats and constant activity as the price of that.