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Tube: Leicester Square. By night, when the big cinemas and discos are doing good business, and the buskers are entertaining the crowds, Leicester Square is one of the most crowded places in London, particularly on a Friday or Saturday when huge numbers of tourists and half the youth of the suburbs seem to congregate here. By day, queues form for half-price deals at the Society of West End Theatres booth at the south end of the square, while touts haggle over the price of dodgy tickets for the top shows, and clubbers hand out flyers to likely looking punters. It wasn't until the mid-nineteenth century that the square actually began to emerge as an entertainment zone, with accommodation houses (for prostitutes and their clients), and music halls such as the grandiose Empire and the Hippodrome (just off the square), edifices which survive today as cinemas and discos. Cinema moved in during the 1930s, a golden age evoked by the sleek black lines of the Odeon on the east side, and maintains its grip on the area. The Empire, at the top end of the square, is the favourite for the big royal premieres, and, in a rather half-hearted imitation of the Hollywood (and Cannes) tradition, there are even hand-prints visible in the pavement by the southwestern corner of the square
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