London's most glorious traffic-island

Marble Arch in 1910

The newly-revamped Marble Arch has been a dominant London landmark for 181 years.

It proudly stands at the junction of Park Lane, Oxford Street and Edgware Road, facing Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner, with a constant flow of West End traffic rushing by.

Designed by John Nash in 1828, Marble Arch was originally positioned on The Mall as a gateway to the new Buckingham Palace.

Nash had rebuilt the palace (it was formerly Buckingham House) but it didn't yet have its present flat east front, meaning the inner courtyard was still open on one side.

The arch, made of Carrara marble, was placed at the entrance to this open side of the courtyard but it was finally moved in 1851, the same year as the Great Exhibition, to its present location during the building of the east side of the palace.

Legend has it the arch was moved because it was too narrow for the Queen's state coach to pass through, however the gold state coach passed under it in 1953 during Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.

Marble Arch effectively sits on a traffic island and is accessible from Marble Arch tube station.

Inside the arch

Queen Elizabeth II's coronation procession in 1953

There are three rooms inside the arch that, until 1950, were used as a police station. First, for the royal constables of the Park and later the Metropolitan Police.

During a riot in 1855 the crowd were brought to order by a body of police, who emerged from the arch taking the demonstrators by surprise.

The area around Marble Arch was once the home of Tyburn Gallows. The original site is marked by a triangular plaque on the roadway.

Prisoners were dragged up from Newgate Prison and stood on a wooden cart. The horses were then whipped and ran away, leaving them to dangle from a noose. An estimated 50,000 people were put to death between 1300 and 1783.

Marble Arch has even been the subject of a Cambridge University research paper which suggests the removal of 'one of London's most conspicuous and familiar monuments' to a site in Park Square, Regent's Park, where 'it would serve to link the axis of Portland Place with the Broad Walk, as evidently intended by Nash'.

Marble Arch lit up after revamp