Inigo Jones laid the square out in the 1630s and Charles Fowler's market buildings went up around 1830. Hitchcock shot Frenzy here in 1971, three years before the wholesale market moved out.
What Covent Garden looks like
The market building in the piazza has open ends and a covered arcade through the middle. Grey granite columns hold up the colonnades along the north and south fronts, and the arcade has a glazed roof on wooden king post trusses.
Inigo Jones laid the square out in the 1630s for the fourth Earl of Bedford. It was London's first square of its kind. Charles Fowler designed s for the sixth Duke and they were built between 1828 and 1830 in granite and yellow brick.
The middle range of the market lines up with , which Jones built at the same time as the square. The portico facing the piazza has never been the way in. The altar sits behind that wall and the door is off Bedford Street.
Wholesale trading went on here until November 1974, when the fruit and vegetable market moved to Nine Elms. The hall reopened as shops in 1980 and the craft stalls under the north range are still called the Apple Market.
Around the square the streets are narrower and mostly brick and stucco, four and five storeys. The takes up one side of and the Theatre Royal is round the corner on Catherine Street.
Long Acre divides the district. Thomas Neale laid out north of it in the 1690s and angled the streets to meet at one point so the plots came out triangular, because ground rent went by the foot of frontage. The shopfronts around the junction are still narrow.
Films shot in Covent Garden
Alfred Hitchcock shot Frenzy around the piazza between July and October 1971. The wholesale market he filmed moved out to Nine Elms three years later, so those scenes are a record of the place rather than something a production could repeat. The buildings he used around the market are still there.
Frenzy, 1972
Robert Rusk takes Babs up to his flat at 3 . The camera follows them to the door, then backs down the staircase on its own and out into the street while the murder happens off screen. The interior was a stage set, and the join is hidden behind a porter who crosses the front of the lens with a sack of potatoes. The ground floor is a restaurant now.
Frenzy, 1972
Richard Blaney is sacked from the bar here by the landlord Felix Forsythe, played by Bernard Cribbins. It was the Globe in 1971 and it trades as the Tavern now. It was under scaffolding again in March 2025 for another refit, so check the front before you plan a shot on it.
What Covent Garden can double for
Covent Garden can stand in for a nineteenth century market hall, the West End theatre district and a European city square.
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