Hotels near The Circus

Walk 200 metres east from the Royal Crescent along Brock Street and the street opens into the Circus, a ring of 33 houses split into three curved segments by three entrances. John Wood the Elder designed it in 1754 and died three months after the foundation stone went down, leaving his son to finish the job by 1768. The three tiers of columns run Doric, Ionic and Corinthian from bottom to top, and 525 carved emblems circle the frieze above the ground floor, covering everything from serpents to nautical instruments.

Wood was interested in Druidic and Masonic geometry, and the Circus has almost exactly the same diameter as the stone circle at Stonehenge. Seen from above it forms a circle, with Gay Street as the line connecting it to Queen Square, a layout often read as a key symbol. Five large plane trees fill the centre, planted in the 1820s and still the subject of periodic local arguments. There is no ticket and no opening time - it is a residential street, and Thomas Gainsborough lived at No. 17.

Pro Tip: Stand in the middle of the grass under the plane trees and speak at normal volume. The curved facades bounce your own voice back at you from all sides, an acoustic quirk most visitors walk straight past. People still live here, so keep noise down after dark.