SOHO quarter, the shopping and entertainment in Central London. It occupies about a square mile and clearly limited: to the South to Piccadilly circus, from North – Oxford street, West Regent street, from the East – Charing Cross road.

By the seventeenth century it was already an established area. At different times there lived Haydn, Mozart, Casanova, Canaletto, Blake, Newton, Johnson, Marx. The story of the quarter was ambiguous, but it is in any case the road to its residents. Therefore, in the 1970-ies, when SOHO was going to completely tear down to build up again, the residents formed a "Society of SOHO". It persuaded the government to leave a quarter as a reserve. There are no skyscrapers, these cozy streets to remember past century.

It is believed that the name "SOHO" is derived from the cry, which the huntsman encourages hunters. In 1536 on the orders of Henry III here defeated the Royal Park is a must, and the hunt was on. Later these lands belonged to the Earls of Leicester and Portland. They built a quarter, hoping for rich residents, but nothing came of it – in SOHO settled mostly by immigrants. By the mid-nineteenth century, respectable family went away, but it opened brothels, music halls and cheap eateries.

In 1854 SOHO cholera broke out. At that time suspected that cholera and plague sick because of miasma in "bad air". English physician John snow carefully studied all the cases of cholera in SOHO. Interacting with the locals, he identified the source of the outbreak is not bad air, and a public pump, the water that has been polluted by being brought there by runoff. Snow persuaded the authorities to shut down the pump (simply remove the handle), and cholera subsided. Now on the corner of Brodick street and Lexington street set up with a pump without a handle, but on the contrary, in the pub "Jon snow", you can drink for one of the fathers of epidemiology.

In the twentieth century, SOHO became a Bohemian place. According to the folklore, the local pubs every night was full of drunken writers and artists, many of whom were sober so rarely that it had no time to become famous. However, someone had managed: SOHO is considered the birthplace of British jazz, it also started those whose names are now famous, Eric Clapton, Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols.

Now SOHO is filled with bars, restaurants, night clubs and sex shops. The quarter was chosen by the London gay community. In 1999, tragedy struck – the neo-Nazis blew up a gay pub the Admiral Duncan on old Compton street, killing three people. In SOHO London are Chinatown, theatres, cinemas, music shops and small street market on Berwick street.

However here there are some Christian churches (including the Anglican St. Anne and St. Patrick Catholic), the hare Krishna temple and a small mosque.