Covent Garden
— — the square where the apple market used to be.
Not only on a wall.
“The old fruit and vegetable market north of the Strand, where Inigo Jones laid out the first true London piazza in the 1630s. The wholesale trade left for Nine Elms in 1974 and the iron-and-glass halls became shops and cafes. Street performers work the lower courtyard on a license from the estate. The Royal Opera House sits on the northeast corner.
Covent Garden, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Covent Garden occupies a few blocks of London's West End between the Strand to the south and Long Acre to the north, inside the City of Westminster. Inigo Jones designed the piazza in the 1630s for Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, modelled on the squares Jones had seen in Livorno and Paris. The fruit and vegetable wholesale market traded here from 1654 until November 1974, when it moved to New Covent Garden Market in Nine Elms, Battersea. The current market building, by Charles Fowler, opened in 1830.
The piazza is paved in granite setts and yorkstone, framed by St Paul's Church on the west side, built by Inigo Jones in 1633 and known as the Actors' Church for its memorials to performers from David Garrick onward. Charles Fowler's market hall, a Grade I-listed iron-and-glass structure of 1830, runs the length of the square. The Royal Opera House on Bow Street, rebuilt in 1858 by E. M. Barry after two earlier fires, anchors the northeast corner with its Corinthian portico.
The piazza is open to the public and free to walk. The Apple Market and Jubilee Market run inside the halls daily, with antiques on Mondays. Street performers work the lower courtyard on auditioned slots managed by the Covent Garden estate. The London Transport Museum sits on the east side, adult admission around £24 in 2026. Covent Garden tube station, on the Piccadilly line, is one stop from Leicester Square and short walks from Holborn and Charing Cross stations.