Welcome to London x London’s Victoria Guide: your guide to the best bars, restaurants and things to do in this Central London neighbourhood.
Victoria sits in the City of Westminster, just south of Buckingham Palace and St James’s Park, with Pimlico bordering it to the south and Belgravia to the west.
Victoria has a reputation as nothing more than a transport hub, but that undersells it by a mile.
Behind the station forecourt we find a proper mishmash of grand Victorian history and modern London life, from a cathedral with a secret viewing tower to a run of glittering West End stages.
Before Victoria Street existed, Charles Dickens dubbed this patch of London the Devil’s Acre, a name earned by the crime and poverty that thrived in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. It was, by most accounts, one of the roughest corners of the city, a warren of slum courts that respectable Londoners avoided.
Over the past two centuries the area has shaken off that history entirely. What was once slum housing is now a thoroughly metropolitan slice of London, where grand hotels and a soaring Byzantine-style cathedral sit comfortably alongside office blocks, shopping centres and theatres.
It is still, first and foremost, a place people pass through on their way somewhere else, but slow down and Victoria rewards a proper look.
Grand history hiding behind a busy transport hub
