Hyde Park Corner
51°30′10″N 0°9′4.5″W / 51.50278°N 0.151250°W
Hyde Park Corner is between Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Mayfair in London, England. It primarily refers to a major road junction at the south-eastern corner of Hyde Park. Until 1883, it was a T-junction where Piccadiily (east) and Knightsbridge (west) met Grosvenor Place (south).
In the 1820s, King George IV initiated the renovation of the Royal Parks in London and the creation of a ceremonial approach to Buckingham Palace. The architect Decimus Burton was commissioned to design the route and the monuments at Hyde Park Corner. These honoured the Duke of Wellington, hero of the Napoleonic Wars, who lived at Apsley House.
Burton's plan was for an Ionic Screen on the north side of the junction and a triumphal arch on its south side, across the entrance to Green Park. An existing carriage drive led round a bend and down Constitution Hill to the Mall and Buckingham Palace, where Nash's Marble Arch was to mark the entrance.
Traffic congestion at the junction led to its expansion, first in the 1880s and then in the 1960s, taking land from Green Park and the gardens of Buckingham Palace. This gave it its present form of a large rectangular roundabout with, at its centre, a green space with many monuments. This was proposed in 1937 by the civil engineer Sir Charles Bressey and the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Dominating the space within the roundabout is the Wellington Arch, a huge triumphal arch surmounted by a sculpture, Peace descending on the Quadriga of War. When the roundabout was built, an underpass was created to take the east-west traffic between Piccadilly and Knightsbridge.
Through all the changes, the ceremonial route has remained in use, complicating design of the junction. Mounted cavalry based at Hyde Park Barracks pass through the Ionic Screen and Wellington Arch to Constitution Hill on their way to Buckingham Palace.