Connections to the palace are good for business
When »The Arcade« opened in 1879, linking Bond Street with Albemarle Street in the high-class district of Mayfair, the idea of putting a row of shops beneath a single roof was not new. Covered passageways like this had been built in Paris almost 100 years earlier, and the English weather was an excellent reason for copying the plan. London’s oldest arcade is the beautiful, though now sadly neglected, Royal Opera Arcade on Haymarket, which dates from 1816. Three years later Burlington Arcade appeared on Piccadilly at the south end of Mayfair.
When it was inaugurated, The Arcade was not yet entitled to call itself »royal«, despite the richness of its architecture. Its classical façades have elaborate plaster adornments. Shoppers who care to take their eyes off the luxury goods and look up are greeted by lightly clad goddesses and their attendants, mythological scenes representing Prosperity and Plenty. The decorative details are picked out in white, orange and apricot. The view along the interior of the arcade is a lovely perspective of round arches. Heavy lamps hang beneath the glass roof, and the large shop windows are framed in dark polished wood.
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Address 28 Old Bond Street, W1S 4SL | Public Transport Green Park ( Jubilee, Piccadilly, Victoria Line) | Tip Mayfair is not only about luxury consumption. Handel & Hendrix in London (25 Brook Street, Mon–Sat 11am–6pm, Sun noon–6pm) was once the dwelling of the composer George Frideric Handel. 200 years later, Jimi Hendrix lived next door.
A shirt maker who had the warrant to supply the court of Queen Victoria gained the epithet »royal« for the arcade. A royal florist and a supplier of heraldic stationery were also present. Today, the products sold here are as fine as ever. They range from the fragrances of an exclusive perfumery to made-to-measure shoes, works of art and silverware for high-society dinner tables. A holder of a royal warrant is still represented: the chocolatier Charbonnel et Walker, maker of a drinking chocolate that the Mayfair clientele pronounces to be divine. Does Buckingham Palace order chocolate truffles for guests of state and evenings around the television, or cocoa for a warming bedtime drink? That, of course, is confidential.
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