A tour of Victoria Square: The history behind Birmingham’s civic heart

Victoria Square may now be one of Birmingham’s best-known meeting places, but it has been a churchyard, shopping corner, transport route and civic stage. Nick Dee looks at how generations of redevelopment created the square seen today. Victoria Square is one of Birmingham’s best-known landmarks, but its familiar fountains and grand civic buildings conceal a story of churches, coffee houses, traffic and repeated reinvention. For today’s Look Around the Midlands, we explore how an old crossroads became the city’s ceremonial heart, why Queen Victoria gave it her name, and how a bold nineteen-nineties makeover created the square people know today. Nick Dee has been taking a closer look at a Birmingham landmark that has changed with every generation.