Mayfair and St James’s

This is where royalty shop and the rest of us go to gaze. Many of the wonderful small shops around here were established to serve the royal court at St James’s Palace. Piccadilly – named after the fancy collars called “picadils” sold at a shop in the street in the 18th century – divides St James’s to the south from Mayfair to the north, where top shops continue up Bond Street, Cork Street and Savile Row to Oxford Street. Home to the Royal Academy of Arts since 1868, Mayfair has long been one of the best addresses in town. Today most of London’s top-flight art galleries are here.

Americans in Mayfair America’s connection with Mayfair dates from World War II when General Eisenhower stayed in a house on Grosvenor Square. In 1960 the Embassy building opened on land leased from the Grosvenor Estate, who refused to sell the freehold unless 12,000 acres of their estate in Florida, confiscated after the War of Independence, was returned.