Virtual London - The best place to see London online

Possibly London's busiest shopping street, yet until the turn of the century, Oxford Street and the Piccadilly area were mainly residential.

Today Oxford Street is a solid mile of shops. You are likely to find everything you want in the street's shops and department stores. Major stores include John Lewis, DH Evans and Marks and Spencer. Bookshops include Dillions and Books Etc, and top music shops are HMV and the new Virgin Megastore.

However the street's most famous shop is Selfridges, a vast department store near Bond Street tube station. The shop was built in 1909 by the American Gordon Selfridge, and was the biggest shop in Britain.

The shop is so large that a printed floor plan is available near the entrance to help you navigate around. As well as the usual big store departments, Selfridges has a highly popular food hall.

Oxford Street is always very busy, especially at Christmas time, when crowds get so large that various measures have to be used to prevent gridlock, both for traffic and for pedestrians. At that time of year mounted police control the traffic lights and signal pedestrians to cross, using loud hailers. When the number of shoppers got very large one recent Christmas, the police tried an experiment whereby pedestrians had to use a one-way system and travel up one side of the road and down the other. That experiment has not been repeated. The street is closed throughout the day to all traffic, except for buses and taxis. Traffic jams however, are still common.

Watch out for mock auctions that are sometimes held in empty shops in Oxford Street.

Nearest Underground (Tube) Stations: Oxford Street, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road and Marble Arch.