Covent Garden

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Tweet Report an Error

Beginning in 1639, Covent Garden was laid out by Inigo Jones, the first great British student of Andrea Palladio, as an arcaded piazza modelled on the Italian Renaissance style at the behest of Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford. Inigo Jones's neo-classical church, St Paul's, Covent Garden, was designed to provide a dramatic focus at the centre of the western side of the piazza. The elegant houses, five stories in height, seem even today quite recent, an indication of just how influential the neo-classical style promoted by Jones was to become. Unfortunately, the open market which had originally stood on this site – the “Convent Garden” – operated under titles which Bedford could not foreclose, so the piazza failed to …

182 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Covent Garden". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 January 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=233, accessed 23 November 2024.]

233 Covent Garden 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.