Why Covent Garden at Christmas is the most festive corner of London

Forty giant golden bells, a forest of trees dressed by West End shows and snow that falls on the hour: every December, one old market square goes further than anywhere else in London to feel like Christmas.

I grew up in London, and of all the places the city dresses up for Christmas, Covent Garden is the one I’d send you to first. It was the first stop on my London Christmas lights walk this year, and I nearly didn’t make it any further. Between the bells, the spinning mirror balls and a busker who had the whole market hall singing along, I could have stayed all evening.

This is my guide to Covent Garden at Christmas: what to look out for, what’s on this season, where to eat and drink nearby, and how to fit it into an evening of lights. If you want the full route across the West End, my London Christmas lights walk starts right here and finishes nine stops later in Marylebone.

Covent Garden at Christmas at a glance

• Lights: switched on on Thursday 12 November and lit every evening through the festive season
• The tree: a 50ft Norwegian spruce on the West Piazza
• The Covent Garden Christmas market: from switch-on day until 2 January, Monday to Saturday 10am to 9pm, Sundays from midday
• Snow: falls in the piazza on the hour, every hour, from midday to 9pm, 4 to 31 December (free)
• Nearest Tube: Covent Garden (Piccadilly line) or Leicester Square (Northern and Piccadilly lines)

The bells, the mirror balls and the baubles

The Market Building is the showstopper. Forty giant golden bells, each tied with an oversized red bow, hang beneath the glass roof, with eight mirror balls and twelve enormous red baubles strung between them. The mirror balls throw spots of light across the iron arches and the crowds below, so the whole hall glitters as they turn. If you only see one Christmas display in London, make it this one.

Across Covent Garden, Seven Dials and Neal’s Yard, there are more than 300,000 lights this year. Covent Garden switched them on on Thursday 12 November, the same night as the Strand and Bond Street.

A forest of West End Christmas trees

This is the heart of theatreland, so it’s very apt that the market has a forest of Christmas trees, each one dressed by a different West End show. I spotted Six, My Neighbour Totoro, Mamma Mia!, Legally Blonde and Hadestown, and the full Forest of Theatre also includes Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Sinatra The Musical, The Play That Goes Wrong and Little Dancer. It’s a nice reminder that while this area is all about Christmas at this time of year, it’s about the theatre too. Make a game of finding the tree for whichever show you’re seeing.

Out on the West Piazza, a 50ft Norwegian spruce stands in front of St Paul’s Church, the actors’ church, and it’s the easiest place in Covent Garden to tell someone to meet you.

Buskers, a 1630s piazza and Christmas in its truest form

The piazza was laid out by Inigo Jones in the 1630s, the oldest planned square in London, and for 300 years it was the heart of the city’s fruit, vegetable and flower market. The glass-roofed Market Building came later, in the 19th century, and it’s the reason Covent Garden can do Christmas indoors and out.

There are always buskers in and around Covent Garden; it’s one of the things the area is known for. On my visit, one had the whole crowd singing along underneath the bells. They weren’t necessarily Christmas songs, but with the mirror balls spinning overhead it was fantastic, and there’s nothing more Christmassy than seeing a crowd of strangers sharing a bit of joy.

What’s on at Covent Garden this Christmas

The Christmas market

Stalls selling handmade crafts, artisan gifts and mulled wine opened on switch-on day and stay until 2 January. They’re open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 9pm and on Sundays from midday.

Snow in the piazza

From 4 to 31 December, snow falls in the piazza on the hour, every hour, from midday until 9pm. It’s free, and it’s the best excuse to linger over a hot drink until the next one.

The Theatre of Christmas

Every Thursday evening, choirs and West End casts pop up for surprise performances around the neighbourhood, so a Thursday is the night to come if you want a show with your lights.

The Nutcracker, twice

The Royal Opera House, on the corner of the piazza, has the Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker from 3 December to 13 January, and English National Ballet’s Nutcracker is at the London Coliseum on St Martin’s Lane from 17 December to 10 January. Book early for both: they’re the most popular tickets of the season.

Skating at Somerset House

Ten minutes’ walk away on the Strand, Skate at Somerset House runs from 11 November to 10 January, with a rink in the courtyard of one of the last great palaces on the Thames. It’s an easy add-on if you’re walking on towards the Strand’s fairy lights.

Seven Dials and Neal’s Yard

Don’t stop at the piazza. Walk north up Neal Street and you’re in Seven Dials, where seven roads meet at a sundial column that this year is wrapped in a canopy of fairy lights. It’s lit as part of the same display as the Market Building, and it feels a little more local and a little less crowded.

Seven Dials Market, the former banana warehouse turned food hall, has gone White Christmas this year, with snowfall indoors at 3pm and 8pm every day until 31 December and live music on Friday and Saturday evenings. I love it for Pick & Cheese, where the cheese comes round on a conveyor belt like sushi.

Just around the corner, Neal’s Yard is a tiny courtyard of acid-yellow, cobalt and hot-pink buildings reached through two easily missed alleys off Shorts Gardens and Monmouth Street. Everyone photographs it; far fewer people eat there, which is a mistake. St John now has a proper two-floor site in the yard, so you can sit down with oysters and a glass of wine as well as the famous custard doughnuts.

Where to eat and drink

Covent Garden has some of the most festive places to eat in London, and these are my favourites for a Christmas evening.

• Rules: London’s oldest restaurant, open since 1798 on Maiden Lane, and the place for a traditional British dinner done properly. It’s famous for going all out on its Christmas decorations. If you just want a drink, Upstairs at Rules is one of the best cocktail bars in London, with a winter room of palms under a glass ceiling.
• Clos Maggiore: often called the most romantic restaurant in London, with white flowers winding up the walls and across the conservatory ceiling. Book well ahead in December.
• Lamb & Flag: a pub for over 240 years, said to have been one of Charles Dickens’ favourite watering holes, and a cosy, creaky place to warm up between the lights.
• Petersham Nurseries: tucked into Floral Court, part plant shop, part lifestyle store, part restaurant. It’s the kind of place you wander into for five minutes and leave half an hour later having bought a candle you didn’t know you needed.
• The Barbary: a horseshoe counter in Neal’s Yard cooking North African and Levantine food over open fire. It’s walk-ins only, so go early.
• Hawksmoor Seven Dials: steak and cocktails in a basement bar that works just as well for a pre-dinner drink.

How Covent Garden fits into a night of lights

Covent Garden is the perfect place to start a Christmas lights walk. Get there for dusk, see the bells, the trees and the piazza, take a detour through Seven Dials, then walk down Southampton Street to the fairies on the Strand, five minutes away. From there, my London Christmas lights walk takes you on through St Martin’s Lane, Leicester Square, Regent Street, Carnaby Street, Oxford Street and Bond Street to Marylebone, about 5km in all.

Watch my Christmas lights walk

Covent Garden is the first stop on my walking tour of London’s Christmas lights, which carries on along the Strand and up through the West End to Marylebone.

Map

Here’s Covent Garden at Christmas on a map: the Market Building, the tree, the Royal Opera House, Seven Dials, Neal’s Yard and Rules.

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