The West End of London

The West End of London is an area of Central London, England, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, businesses, headquarters and the commercial West End theatres. West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's "Theatreland". Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London. Total attendances first surpassed 12 million in 2002, and in June 2005 The Times reported that this record might be beaten in 2005. Total attendance numbers surpassed 13 million in 2007, setting a new record for the West End. There is a lot of famous streets in the west end, for example: Kingsway, Oxford street, Park lane and Gower street. Developed in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was originally built as a series of palaces, expensive town houses, fashionable shops and places of entertainment. The name "West End" is a flexible term with different meanings in different contexts. It may refer to the entertainment district around Leicester Square and Covent Garden; to the shopping district centered on Oxford Street, Regent Street, and Bond Street. There are major concentrations of the following buildings and activities in the West End: