Old Compton Street
The visible heart of queer Soho
Old Compton Street has been the spine of queer London for over a century — a place where, unusually, gay life was lived in the open. By the late twentieth century its bars, cafés and bookshops made it the most visibly LGBT street in Britain, a stretch of pavement where holding hands felt possible.
That visibility was hard-won and sometimes targeted. The street's response to violence and loss — gathering, grieving and reopening its doors — has made it a living monument: not a plaque on a wall, but a community that kept showing up.