Christmas lights in London

The switching on of the Oxford Street and Regent Street lights opens London's Christmas season every year, turning the West End's main shopping streets into one of the capital's most visited tourist attractions for several weeks.

The West End's Christmas lights are among the oldest and most famous in Europe, with Regent Street's lights first switched on in 1954. Every year in early November, a switch-on ceremony attended by guest personalities officially inaugurates the lights that then decorate Oxford Street, Regent Street, Covent Garden and Carnaby Street until early January, covering the whole festive season and the January sales.

Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street with several hundred shops along almost two kilometres, sees its already considerable crowds grow even further at Christmas, with iconic department stores such as Selfridges competing every year in inventiveness for their Christmas windows, which have become a tourist attraction in their own right, with queues just to look at the displays.

The planned pedestrianisation of Oxford Street noticeably changes traffic conditions in the area throughout the festive period, with tighter access restrictions for private vehicles on a growing part of the street, a change that local chauffeurs already build into their usual routes to the West End.

Covent Garden, with its historic covered market and its huge Christmas tree traditionally placed on the Piazza, draws particularly dense crowds in the evening and at weekends, when the lights come into their own at nightfall and the surrounding shopping streets fill with visitors enjoying the festive atmosphere.

For international visitors staying in London over Christmas, often combining shopping in the West End department stores with the Christmas markets spread across the capital, from Hyde Park Winter Wonderland to the Southbank Centre Christmas Market, traffic in the city centre becomes much heavier than usual, with crowds on foot frequently spilling onto the road at peak shopping times.

LimoAirportGroup accompanies its clients throughout the season of lights, with a chauffeur who knows the drop-off points suited to the gradual pedestrianisation of the West End and adjusts the routes to the exceptional crowds of this period, for Christmas shopping or a simple stroll among the lights with no traffic or parking constraints.