please empty your brain below
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I'm envious that you've seen Covent Garden like this. It has some interesting architecture that is normally impossible to adequately observe as I cross diagonally at the greatest speed possible given the shuffling hordes and pickpocket-friendly clusters.
Frank F | 25.03.21 - 7:17 a.m. | #
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Amazing pictures DG.
They reminded me of the stills from a 1950's black and white feature film called Seven Days to Noon, about a rogue scientist who threatens London with nuclear device. Streets empty. Crowds gone. Just like your pictures. A great record of our strange times.
IanD | 25.03.21 - 7:36 a.m. | #
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With the South African variant taking hold in Europe, there's a significant chance of no foreign tourists this year either, and I doubt if enough vaccinated UK citizens will relish sightseeing in crowded London later in the year either.
I don't see how an international city like London can function like it did - with all the income that it generates, for the next few years.
Still Anon | 25.03.21 - 7:56 a.m. | #
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Thanks for all that DG. It’s a shame that all that beauty is normally given over to the sale of a lot of tourist tat. But as the man said ‘When money talks it’s always the loudest voice in the room’.
RayB | 25.03.21 - 8:00 a.m. | #
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Like Frank F, I am also envious that you've walked around when it's like this. In normal times I'd generally avoid Covent Garden like the plague (ho ho), but having a chance to see the architecture and layout without the crowds is really interesting, especially the 'handsome barn' of a church. At least we have your photos, DG!
Jayne | 25.03.21 - 8:00 a.m. | #
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It's a bit busier on weekdays, but not by much.
A little unkind to Yoda the Geezer is; hmmm.
NickW | 25.03.21 - 8:09 a.m. | #
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Did you really mean that you hoped the pandemic had bankrupted some street performers? I hope I’ve missed an irony marker somewhere.
Robert Butlin | 25.03.21 - 8:40 a.m. | #
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Robert, your average levitating yoda is not exactly a high skill profession, and they clutter up the tourist parts of London with multiple examples on the same street.
I am sure DG feels more sympathy for the magicians, jugglers etc that have lost their livelihood.
TomH | 25.03.21 - 9:09 a.m. | #
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Another here who appreciates the pictures. Certainly allows the architecture to breathe.
Man of Kent | 25.03.21 - 9:24 a.m. | #
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Normally I'd be popping to Covent Garden for a few reasons - plays at the Donmar Warehouse, charity buys at the excellent branch of Oxfam, and art supplies at the London Graphic Centre. Can't do anything to recreate the first but have had excellent mail order service during the pandemic from the Graphic Centre and have spent rather a lot of hours (and pounds) on the endlessly tempting Oxfam website - second hand books and collectables aplenty.
Joan | 25.03.21 - 9:38 a.m. | #
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I know Covent Garden is in normal times rather tacky and cliched, but despite me being an inveterate cynic there's still something about the whole atmosphere that I enjoy, even the men with metallic faces. If tourists want to fund it by paying over the odds for tat, or leaving banknotes for street performers then good luck to them. Better than being taken in by a dodgy card trick on Westminster Bridge.
Maybe next year...
Andrew S | 25.03.21 - 9:41 a.m. | #
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Robert, many pick-pockets and bike thieves will also have lost their livelihoods but that too is no bad thing i feel.
the other eric | 25.03.21 - 9:45 a.m. | #
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The pandemic has changed the way we live, London is just a shadow of it’s former self. The first time you look at those images you think how beautiful the streets and the buildings, but as you think of just how many people are suffering financally. This is not going to change overnight, and it is the same story over most of Europe.
Michael | 25.03.21 - 10:11 a.m. | #
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Lots of mean-spirited dislike for the harmless levitating Yodas and silver suited robot men today. Excellent. Let's not waste the hate, people; when things are back to normal, let's start pushing them over and nicking their takings. It's the only language these evil wastes of space understand!
Arlu | 25.03.21 - 10:12 a.m. | #
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Many, many years ago I worked at the BBC's offices at Bush House on Aldwych. One day there was a bomb scare - this being a time when Irish dissidents and bombs were still a thing.
We were hearded into the basement and after some time everything was declared safe and we were allowed to leave. But the streets were still shut off so a pair of us decided to walk up Kingsway in the middle of the road. Because why wouldn't you?
It was surreal and perhaps one of the surrealist things I've seen in London (alongside seeing the bomb damage at Canary Wharf some years earlier - and indeed the bombed bus at Aldwych.)
But those moments pale in comparison with photos like these. This is like another world.
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 25.03.21 - 10:27 a.m. | #
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TomH. I am also sure making assumptions about DG’s views is a risky business.
Robert Butlin | 25.03.21 - 10:34 a.m. | #
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The denigration of certain categories of street performer has a very particular history in our popular culture, viz the Patrician Lord Vetinari, or the neighbourhood watch in Hot Fuzz. Appropriate to this post, the ghost encountered in the Piazza in the first of Ben Aaronovitch's magnificent Rivers of London series adopts Mr Punch as a persona to extract some revenge.
J | 25.03.21 - 11:07 a.m. | #
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The conspiracy theorist would love these photos. They're convinced that London being emptied like this all falls into a grand plane, some Illuminati scheme to keep us all locked inside and destroy businesses. It's all nonsense of course. But photos like these will be great currency for the tin-foil hat wearers, the mask sceptics, the lockdown protesters.
London looking like this is a shame. It's sad. It's unfortunate. But it's not a conspiracy. It's not some grand scheme. It's nothing to do with any kind of economic reset.
It's just how things are now. It's just how things are, now.
Doktorb | 25.03.21 - 11:14 a.m. | #
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How early on Sunday morning are we talking ?!
dg writes: There’s a clock on the church.
ADS | Homepage | 25.03.21 - 11:24 a.m. | #
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Quite stunning, without the hordes.
I hope I get to see it before everything returns to normal.
Cornish Cockney | 25.03.21 - 12:04 p.m. | #
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Well the London Transport Museum is closed. So of course it was empty. There isn't any other reason to go there, is there? :-)
Jon Combe | Homepage | 25.03.21 - 1:04 p.m. | #
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Pickpockets and bike thieves break laws that almost everyone accepts. Street artists may be breaking some law, but if so it is a contentious law the existence of which can reasonably be argued against.
Malcolm of Kent | 25.03.21 - 2:26 p.m. | #
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I really hate those floating yoda things.
R2 | 25.03.21 - 3:56 p.m. | #
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I work (worked?) near here.
Never seen it empty.
I'm quite fond of the atmosphere, there's no where else in London quite like it, a proper main square with commerce and outdoor dining and people having fun. It's not on a monumental scale like eg. Trafalgar Square, it's not a ceremonial space, it exists purely for the hedonistic pursuits of eating, drinking, shopping and it serves these purposes very well in a historic setting.
Oh and I really enjoyed the mean spirited little rant about silver floating people, made me chuckle
E | 25.03.21 - 8:00 p.m. | #
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I have actually seen Covent Garden this empty. When it was still a fruit, veg and flower market it was desolate - as I recall it I think on a Sunday. One such morning it was bright and sunny and I used to love the smell - like a mixture of oranges and carrots - that penetrated right to the Central Line platforms. In the lonely sunshine a black dog was worrying a dead cabbage in front of the church. That was the only sign of life. Very peaceful.
Herbof | 25.03.21 - 8:34 p.m. | #
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Really hope Stanfords survives. I was amazed when I first moved to London and discovered it. I don’t quite understand people who have strong feelings for shops but I make an exception for Stanfords!
Alan | 25.03.21 - 9:01 p.m. | #
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Presume you know that Stanfords downsized when the moved from Long Acre to Mercer Walk.
They're now sadly a shadow of their former selves.
ADS | Homepage | 25.03.21 - 11:15 p.m. | #
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The sight of a city dying...of being killed by government dictat. .
Kim | 26.03.21 - 10:15 a.m. | #
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