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The Royal Opera Arcade in London is the oldest arcade in the UK, having been built between 1816 and 1818, so pre-dating even the Burlington Arcade. It runs from Pall Mall to Charles II Street, with His Majesty’s Theatre on Haymarket backing onto the northern end of the arcade. Sadly, it is almost deserted now,…
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The highlight of Hamburg’s oldest arcade is surely the Jugendstil murals, which were basically advertising for Gustav Mellin, whose biscuits gave this arcade its name. Amazingly, these were covered up for nobody knows how long until they were discovered in rebuilding the arcade after a devastating fire in 1989. The other highlight is the 100…
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It may not be London’s oldest arcade, opening in June 1880, some 60 years after its neighbour the Burlington Arcade, but the Royal Arcade is actually my favourite of London’s shopping arcades, and The Globe newspaper in April 1910, reviewing London’s arcades, called the Royal: “the most imposing and ornamental arcade in London.” Outspoken art…
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George’s Street Arcade in Dublin runs through the middle of an enormous red sandstone market building, which had to be rebuilt after a disastrous fire gutted much of the building and destroyed the original arcade in 1892. It runs from South Great George’s Street through to Drury Street, close to Dublin Castle and Temple Bar….
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Princes Arcade began life with an art deco design built between 1929 and 1933, when it formally opened. The arcade today results from a 1980s refurbishment, which aimed for a ‘Jane Austen era’ style, with vintage lamps and rounded-windowed shop fronts. There are classical mouldings in the ceilings and above the shops on the fronts,…
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Brisbane Arcade is a 1920s masterpiece with shops on two levels, beautiful lead light windows over every unit and high up just below the Art Deco designed ceiling. There are six chandeliers lighting up the arcade, marble staircases up to the upper balcony and two walk ways across the middle of the Arcade giving great…
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London’s Burlington Arcade opened in 1819 and has been a role model for many other arcades that opened up around the UK in the following years, becoming the place to see and be seen, and specialising in luxury. In many respects it is still the same today, over 200 years on. Beadles in uniform still…
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Adelaide Arcade must be the envy of many arcades round the world: it has achieved high occupancy rate, high footfall and a fantastic awareness of its own history, with a museum upstairs in the arcade where there are highlights of the arcade’s past and even a recording of the original polka tune composed for the…
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The Royal Arcade in Keighley, West Yorkshire, is still going strong, although in the 1980s it was derelict and might well have gone under the bulldozer. Thank goodness it was bought by developers who wanted to restore its Edwardian/Victorian charm. This arcade has a T-shape, with the name of the arcade standing clearly over the…
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The Passage du Prince is slightly the poor cousin of its illustrious neighbours in the Galeries Royales. Its glass ceiling is somewhat more modest, its shops not quite so ostentatious. And it is only one storey high, so the ceiling also doesn’t pull the gaze upwards as it does in the other Royal arcades. But…
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One of the speakers at the formal opening of Stirling Arcade in 1882 claimed “Friends who had been in Paris and London…said there was not an arcade in Paris of the magnificence of roof and general beauty of the Stirling Arcade.” The roof and fittings of the shop fronts have had a few facelifts in…
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Galerie Ravenstein in Brussels almost feels as if it’s the set for a 1950s sci-fi movie. It was built in 1958, at the time Brussels was developing into the home of the new European institutions. It must have looked so futuristic at the time, with its dramatic round glass ceiling, its ornate tiling, and the…
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Barton Arcade was once known by some as Manchester’s “Little Crystal Palace,” because of its domed roof of glass. The glass ceiling still features today, with the gaze drawn up towards it by the three levels of iron balconies that run around the 3-4 storeys of this 1871 arcade. The upper floors are no longer…
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Passage Verdeau is the third in a line of arcades that extends northwards, starting at the Passage des Panoramas, continuing through the Passage Jouffroy, and finishing at the northern end of Passage Verdeau, which opens out onto rue du Faubourg Montmartre. Its glass ceiling, with its fishbone window frames, is perhaps this arcade’s most striking…
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The highlight of the 1929 Exchange Arcade in Nottingham is above your head, in the four frescoes which depict different stages of Nottingham’s history: there’s the arrival of the Vikings into the city in 868AD, William the Conqueror visiting Nottingham in 1068, Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, and Charles I raising his standard here from…
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The Theatre Royal is perhaps the main feature of the Galerie de la Reine in Brussels, with its Magritte-painted domed ceiling, still drawing in theatre-goers over 100 years since it first opened. The Galerie de la Reine is really just the continuation of the Galerie du Roi, extending beyond the central section towards the north….
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The Arcade in Bedford opened in 1905, and one of its tenants today has been serving sweets to the locals for just about as long as the arcade has existed. Arcadia is one of those vintage sweet shops that go down well in this sort of arcade. The Arcade is an unpretentious walkway that joins…
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This 1847 beauty with its high glass ceiling and iron framed windows is buzzing today with a wonderful mix of old traders (the Neuhaus chocolate shop dating from 1857, with the original N in its stained glass windows; the Italian glove shop from 1890; the Brussels lace shop), and the more modern arty shops, with…
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Running from Piccadilly to Jermyn Street, Piccadilly Arcade is home to a beautiful set of individual shops, mostly very high-end, and the majority catering for stylish menswear. It is rather appropriate, therefore, that at the Jermyn St end of the arcade, there is a sculpture of the original leader of (upper-class) men’s fashion, Beau Brummel….
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The Passage du Grand Cerf is said to have the tallest ceiling of all Paris’s arcades. It’s only partially glass, though, with classic designs in the moulding of the stone sections. On the way in to the arcade is a stag’s head, displayed like a hunting trophy, no doubt placed there because of the arcade’s…
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Reading’s Harris Arcade could be an Art Deco gem. Built in the late 1920s, the individual shop units still have lots of original features, with their glass fronts and wooden shop frames. But with over half the units lying empty in 2023, and very little footfall along its long walkway from Friar Street to Station…
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A 1905 visitor to Passage Jouffroy, writing in the Berwickshire News, described this passage in a way which could almost have fitted a 2023 visitor: “An arcade of small, tidy shops, with temptingly decked windows exhibiting all kinds of novelties in the shape of toys, fancy articles etc…” The Musee Grevin is one of the…
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When the butcher and financier – Vero and Dodat – put up the funding for this arcade in the centre of Paris, it was known by the more humble title of ‘Passage Vero-Dodat,’ but these days it has taken on the more glamorous ‘galerie’ name, to bring it into line with its neighbours Vivienne and…
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The Galerie Vivienne is probably the most spectacular, eye-catching of the Paris arcades. Whether you look up, down or around, there are stylish delights to feast the eyes, from the tiled mosaic flooring, done by Italians Mazzioli and Facchina, to the classic figures in the coving and ceilings above; with its splendid glass dome, bringing…
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The arcades in Inverness have always been under the same roof as the city’s covered market. In the arcade sections, the ceiling and iron framework have retained their original look (though the original building was completely destroyed by fire in 1889 so although the first arcade dates from 1860, these buildings were opened in 1890…
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The highlights of Makinson Arcade in Wigan are the two entrances, with the name in beautiful Art Nouveau script, and the stained glass windows. But also, don’t miss down at the bottom end of the arcade, towards Market Street, there is the original tiled entrance of Makinson’s Teas and Coffees, the shop from which the…
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Before it opened in 1881, the Belfast Newsletter said Queen’s Arcade would become ‘one of the leading thoroughfares of the town’. And it still is today, running from Donegall Place to Fountain Street in the centre of Belfast’s shopping district, meaning a steady flow of shoppers and pedestrians walking through. There were originally 27 shops,…
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When the Strand Arcade opened in November 1882, the Derbyshire Advertiser thought it could help the city emulate the likes of London or the ‘cities of the Continent.’ The arcade runs in a pleasantly-shaped curve from the equally-attractive terrace of buildings called The Strand to the Sadlergate, which itself has a range of interesting independent…
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Westminster Arcade in Harrogate dates from 1898, though it was initially called the Royal Arcade. It might have been conceived in a similar time to many other arcades in the UK, but it was unusual in being built up over several floors, with fairly large shop units, rather than the more common passageway with connecting…
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Hull once had at least six arcades, but of the two which survive, Paragon Arcade in the centre of the city pre-dates the old town’s Hepworth Arcade by two years, opening its doors in 1892. It runs in a straight line for about 80m, connecting Paragon Street and Carr Lane. Its name is carved into…