Welcome to Spitalfields

Spitalfields is full of contrasts - quirky, historic, trend-settingly modern, tatty and smart. It's the kind of place where it pays to look beyond the obvious. Many of Spitalfields' attractions are the less obvious, smaller kind, but nonetheless worth visiting.

Wandering around you'll find houses so old and unloved their interiors haven't been changed for centuries and others whose owners have seized on the chance to lavish thousands on their restoration to former glories. Your sense of smell will no doubt guide you towards the many Bangladeshi restaurants which Brick Lane is famous.

If you follow the road northwards towards Bethnal Green Road, you get an insight into the changing nature of the area. Coffee shops, art galleries, designers' studios are all popping up in expected corners as evidence that the area is already a magnet for a very diverse group of inhabitants, almost all of them from other areas of the country and the world.

Each market has its own very distinctive atmosphere and speciality. Brick Lane is home to bric-a-brac, while Columbia Road Flower Market is a paradise for vegetables, and Petticoat Lane - the oldest and probably most famours market - sells all kinds of clothes, records, leather goods and toys.