Piccadilly, from Coventry Street

According to Georgian sources, Piccadilly took its name from a gaming-house for the nobility (or otherwise described as "Peccadilla Hall, a sort of repository for ruffs") of the first half of the seventeenth century that stood in this area (modern suggestions include that the street was named for a tailor who made 'picadils' which were a kind of stiff collar). The street was completed in 1642 and forms one of the two major streets leading westwards out of London (the other is Oxford Street). For some time after the Restoration of Charles II the street was known as Portugal Street after Charles' queen, Catherine, who was Portuguese.