Piccadilly Circus tube station

Piccadilly Circus station lies beneath the famous roundabout in the City of Westminster. It serves the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines, linking Oxford Circus to Charing Cross and Green Park to Leicester Square. The station has entrances at every corner of the circus, making it easy to reach from surrounding streets. Its two lines share a single ticket hall built in the 1920s by Charles Holden. The old Edwardian building, designed by Leslie Green, was demolished in the 1980s but parts survive in disused areas. The station handles millions of passengers each year, making it one of London’s busiest. The station’s unusual layout includes a back-to-back arrangement on the Bakerloo line. A crossover tunnel lets passengers see both platforms at once from a single viewpoint. The ticket hall once featured a mural by Stephen Bone showing London at the centre of the world. This was later replaced by advertising. In 2016, an artwork called Beauty < Immortality was installed to honour Frank Pick, the former London Transport chief. The piece uses the Johnston typeface, which Pick commissioned in 1915 and is still used today. Visitors can explore the station’s deep platforms and the grand sub-surface ticket hall. The Bakerloo line platforms offer a rare view of the network’s inner workings. London Transport Museum runs guided tours of the original Edwardian parts through its Hidden London programme. Above ground, the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, commonly known as Eros, stands directly over the station. Buses serve the area day and night, making it a key transport hub in central London.