Piccadilly Circus
— the corner that will not stop glowing.
Not only on a wall.
“London's busiest junction, where Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly all meet. John Nash laid out the curve in 1819. At the centre, the winged figure on the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain has been mis-named Eros since 1893. Above the corner, the great electric signs have lit the West End almost continuously since 1908. The theatres begin one street over. The city does not sleep here.
Piccadilly Circus, 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.
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public square in the West End of London, laid out by John Nash in 1819 as part of his Regent Street improvement. It marks the meeting of Regent Street, Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue, Coventry Street and Haymarket. The original Nash plan was a true circus (a circle) until Shaftesbury Avenue was cut through in 1886 and the geometry broke. At the centre stands the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, unveiled in 1893, topped with Alfred Gilbert's winged aluminium figure of Anteros, almost universally called Eros.
The corner has been electrically advertised since 1908, when a Perrier sign went up on a building at the north-west corner. The displays grew through the twentieth century into the wall now called the Piccadilly Lights, a single curved LED screen since 2017, replacing six separate signs. Coca-Cola has held a slot on the corner continuously since 1955, the longest tenancy on the wall. After dark, the light spills across the fountain and the road and gives the square its colour.
The square keeps the rhythm of the West End theatres around it. The Criterion, on the south side, has been staging plays since 1874. New Year's Eve crowds spill north from the river fireworks toward the lights. Pride in London passes through every summer. Christmas brings the Regent Street lights to the square's edge from early November. Trafalgar Square is six minutes south on foot, Soho one block north, and the underground station beneath the circus serves the Piccadilly and Bakerloo lines.