Trafalgar Square

• 1. Introduction

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  Trafalgar Square stands at the official centre of London, a point from which all distances from the capital are measured. Before the square existed, the site was a royal stable yard stretching back to the reign of Edward I, where hawks were kept for moulting, a practice that gave the Royal Mews its name. Beneath the paving stones, builders in the late 1950s uncovered something stranger still: river terrace deposits containing fossils from the Last Interglacial, a period some 115,000 to 130,000 years ago. The remains of cave lions, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and straight-tusked elephants lay beneath one of the world's most recognized public spaces. How a medieval falcon yard became a site of political fury, royal commemoration, and annual Norwegian generosity is the story the square itself tells.

• 2. Birth of the Square

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  John Nash received instructions in 1826 from the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues to draw up plans for clearing a large area south of the old Crown Stables block designed by William Kent. Nash envisioned leaving the entire future square open, with one exception: a block in the centre reserved for a new Royal Academy of Arts building. That reservation would not survive. Nash died in 1835, just as clearance was getting underway, and the project stalled.

  William Wilkins completed the National Gallery on the north side between 1832 and 1838, yet his plan for laying out the square sat unapproved until 1837, and even then went unimplemented. A central problem was the sloping terrain and the widespread criticism that the National Gallery lacked grandeur. After Wilkins died, the architect Charles Barry took over in April 1840 and his plans were accepted within weeks. Barry excavated the main area down to the level of the footway between Cockspur Street and the Strand, then built a 15-foot balustraded terrace along the north side, with steps at each end. All the stonework was cut from Aberdeen granite. The square finally opened to the public on the 1st of May 1844, nearly two decades after Nash first drew his plans.

• 3. Nelson's Column

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  A Nelson Memorial Committee approached Her Majesty's Government in 1838 with a proposal: a monument to Trafalgar, paid for by public subscription, to be erected in the new square. A competition followed, won by the architect William Railton. Railton's design called for a 218-foot-3-inch Corinthian column topped by a statue of Horatio Nelson, the vice-admiral who commanded the British Navy at the battle. Public objections were widespread, but construction began in 1840 with the height reduced to 145 feet 3 inches. The column was finished and the statue raised in November 1843.

  The four bronze lions that guard the base were part of the original design but did not arrive until 1867, more than two decades after the column was complete. The sculptor Sir Edwin Landseer had requested that a lion from the London Zoo be brought to his studio after it died. He took so long completing his sketches that the animal's corpse began to decompose, and some portions had to be improvised. Critics have noted that the paws of the finished statues resemble a cat's more than a lion's. Charles Barry made no secret of his objections to the entire column. In July 1840, when only its foundations had been laid, he told a parliamentary select committee that the area would be better left wholly free of isolated objects of art.

  During the Second World War, the Schutzstaffel of Nazi Germany reportedly drew up secret plans to move the column to Berlin following an anticipated invasion, a detail later recorded by the historian Norman Longmate in his 1972 book If Britain Had Fallen.

• 4. A Stage for Protest

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  The great Chartist rally of 1848, a working-class campaign for social reform, gathered in the square in its earliest years. After that, a ban on political rallies held until the 1880s, when the emerging Labour movement and the Social Democratic Federation began returning. On the 8th of February 1886, a protest against unemployment ended in a riot in Pall Mall. The larger riot, known as Bloody Sunday, broke out in the square itself on the 13th of November 1887.

  The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament launched its first Aldermaston March from Trafalgar Square in 1958. On the 19th of September 1961, the Committee of 100, which included the philosopher Bertrand Russell, held a demonstration for peace and against nuclear weapons. In March 1968 a crowd of 10,000 marched from the square to the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square to protest the Vietnam War. In 1990 a demonstration attended by 200,000 people kicked off the Poll Tax Riots, which spread across the surrounding streets.

  Suffragette bombings hit the square twice in 1913 and 1914, as part of a nationwide campaign for women's suffrage. The first attempt, on the 15th of May 1913, planted a bomb outside the National Gallery that failed to detonate. A second bomb exploded inside St Martin-in-the-Fields on the 4th of April 1914, blowing out the windows and starting a fire. In the weeks that followed, Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral were also attacked. The square's role as a gathering point for outrage and solidarity extended beyond domestic politics: a vigil was held there shortly after the London bombings on the 7th of July 2005, and in November 2015 crowds sang La Marseillaise and held banners in support of Paris following the terrorist attacks there.

• 5. Sculptures and Plinths

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  Barry's original scheme included four plinths, and three were filled during the 19th century with figures most Londoners today would struggle to name. General Sir Charles James Napier arrived in the south-west corner in 1855, followed by Major-General Sir Henry Havelock in the south-east in 1861. A bronze equestrian statue of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur, cast in 1633 and placed on the south side in 1678, predates the square itself by nearly two centuries.

  Two statues were erected and later moved. Edward Jenner, pioneer of the smallpox vaccine, stood in the south-west corner from 1858, sculpted by William Calder Marshall, with his inauguration presided over by Prince Albert. He was relocated to Kensington Gardens in 1862. A statue of General Charles George Gordon by Hamo Thornycroft stood on an 18-foot pedestal between the fountains from 1888 until its removal in 1943; it was resited on the Victoria Embankment ten years later.

  The north-west plinth, the fourth plinth, stood empty for the better part of two centuries. Beginning in 1999, the Royal Society of Arts initiated a scheme to fill it with rotating temporary commissions, continued by a Fourth Plinth Commission appointed by the Mayor of London. Against the north wall, three busts of admirals were installed in 1948: John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe and David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, both linked to the square's fountains, which were themselves redesigned as memorials to the two men. A third bust, of First Sea Lord Andrew Cunningham by the Czech sculptor Franta Belsky, was unveiled alongside them on the 2nd of April 1967.

• 6. Norway's Annual Gift

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  Every year since 1947 the city of Oslo has sent London a Norway spruce, or occasionally a fir, as the square's Christmas tree. The gift is a token of gratitude for British support during the Second World War. Prince Olav and the Norwegian government lived in exile in London throughout the conflict, a fact that has kept the tradition alive for more than seven decades.

  The tree is selected by the Head Forester from Oslo's municipal forest and shipped across the North Sea to the Port of Felixstowe, then transported by road to the square. The first tree stood 48 feet tall. More recently the height has been around 75 feet. Westminster City Council threatened to cancel the ceremony in 1980 to save £5,000, but reversed the decision. The tree comes down on the twelfth night of Christmas for recycling. In 1990 a man sawed into the trunk with a chainsaw hours before a New Year's Eve party was due to start. He was arrested, and tree surgeons suspended the tree from a crane to remove the gouged sections and repair it.

• 7. Pigeons, Performers, and Premieres

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  Feral pigeons found Trafalgar Square before construction finished. At the peak of their occupation, the flock was estimated at 35,000 birds. Their droppings damaged stonework badly enough that repairs to Nelson's Column alone cost £140,000. A stall holder named Bernie Rayner became notorious for selling bird seed to tourists at inflated prices. In February 2001 the sale of bird seed in the square was banned and birds of prey were introduced to discourage the pigeons. Bylaws enacted in 2003 banned feeding them outright, with further bans extended to the North Terrace in September 2007.

  Trafalgar Square is one of London's most active busking venues. Background noise there frequently exceeds 70 decibels. In 2015, then-mayor Boris Johnson helped launch the first International Busking Day with the square at its centre. The following year, the Busk in London Festival returned for nine days, drawing performers from around the world. In March 2025 a judge described busking in Leicester Square as psychological torture, effectively leaving Trafalgar Square as the only viable amplified pitch in central London.

  In July 2011, when building works occupied Leicester Square, the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was held in Trafalgar Square, with a 0.75-mile red carpet connecting the two squares. Fans camped for up to three days in the square ahead of the event, enduring torrential rain. It was the first film premiere ever to take place there. In the square's cultural geography, George Orwell imagined a parallel: in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the totalitarian regime renamed the square Victory Square and replaced Nelson's statue with a giant effigy of Big Brother.