Covent Garden - even from the Roman period was a core part of the settlement of Londinium. The title Covent Garden grew to become a district in London during the reign of King John Lackland 1199-1256, it was then a forty acre (one hundred sixty,000 m2) piece of land within the county of Middlesex, and marked to the east and to the west by the modern streets of St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane, and within the north and the south by Floral Avenue and a line between Chandos Place, alongside Maiden Lane and Exeter Avenue to Aldwych.

In the rectangle, was the abbey and the convent of St. Peter in Westminster with a medieval Garden for his or her every day meals needs. During the next three centuries, the covent Garden area became an ever extra important source of vegatables and fruits for London. The Garden was managed by a succession of managers on behalf of the Abbot of Westminster. One of these award brought on property disputes with the crown, which Henry VIII revoked with a brushstroke in 1540. He took it through the Reformation of the monasteries and had their possessions in his favor.

John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, also owned a part of the land too. In compliance with the dying wish of his father, King Edward VI, the remaining part of Covent Garden in 1547 was left to his uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset.

When Seymour was later beheaded for treason in 1552, the realm was again in possession of royalty and four months later as a reward to the person who was responsible for the downfall of Seymour, forty acres, known as Covent Garden and the lengthy acre glided by royal decree permanently into the possession of the Earl of Bedford.

As we speak's Covent Garden has its roots in the early 17th Century, when the Covent Garden was newly developed by Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford. On his behalf Inigo Jones, an important English architect of the Renaissance created a sublime residential area. Inspired by the good piazzas of Rome, Livorno and other Italian cities, he designed a big public square in the heart of Covent Garden.

The coated market of Covent Garden market is the world that rapidly turned probably the most necessary places for the market traders and after the Great Hearth of London in 1666, the many competing markets within the jap city were destroyed, the market in Covent Garden was then a very powerful in the area. Unique goods from world wide have been brought by boats on the Thames up to the market and sold.

The first point out of a Punch-and-Judy show, a typical British puppet, was by the creator Samuel Pepys in May 1662 in his diary. Till 1830 the market halls had been paying homage to Bath because it was founded like Roman baths and they constructed a more everlasting market operating independently from dangerous weather.

In the late 1960's the congestion within the small streets surrounding the market reached such a stage that the market was an inefficient operation - and the necessary massive quantities items have been a significant cause for traffic problems. The entire area was thus a part of a whole redevelopment plan, and after a public outcry in 1973 dozens of buildings around the square obtained monument standing in an effort to forestall additional changes. In 1974 the market lastly migrated to a new place, referred to as the New Covent Garden Market, three miles south-west at 9 Elms. Then the Covent Garden area languished until 1980, and the halls were opened again as a shopping mall and vacationer attraction. Additionally on the piazza is the London Transport Museum.

The Market Square and the Royal Opera Home have been in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (later additionally the material for the musical "My Fair Woman") and in a exceptional way. When Professor Higgins on a horse-drawn carriage waited there to go house from the opera, he turned aware of Eliza Doolittle, out there within the worst Cockney vocal dialect providing flowers for sale.