Buchanan Street - Location

Location

It runs south from the junction with Sauchiehall Street. At its north end are the Buchanan Galleries and the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. The Princes Square mall and a flagship branch of the House of Fraser department store are opposite one another further south, and the street meets Argyle Street at the south, just north of St. Enoch Square. Buchanan Street is now entirely pedestrianised, but the streets that cross it (Bath Street, George Street, St. Vincent Street, and Argyle Street) are not.

Buchanan Street cuts through Nelson Mandela Place, which was renamed by the Labour city council from St George's Place, the address of the South African Consulate, as a protest to the ANC activist Nelson Mandela being a political prisoner of the South African Apartheid regime. At the time and even after becoming the first black president of South Africa, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher considered him and the ANC to be "terrorists". Buchanan Street is also adjacent to St George's-Tron Church and the Glasgow Stock Exchange building, and Royal Exchange Square, which now houses the Gallery of Modern Art.