Before Seven Dials was among London’s most-coveted real estate, it was a place of great poverty; a location pregnant with crime, rundown houses and gin shops around every corner. Children roamed the streets unsupervised, and residents struggled to survive in small, overcrowded houses. English Romantic Poet John Keats described Seven Dials as place “…where misery clings to misery for a little warmth, and want and disease lie down side-by-side, and groan together.”

But if you go back even before it was considered the slums, Seven Dials was established to be the most fashionable address in London. So what went wrong? In the early 1690s, Thomas Neal imagined his vision for Covent Garden in London’s West End. Laying out a series of triangles, Neal sought to maximize the number of houses through this method, since at the time, rentals were charged per foot of frontage and not per square foot of interiors.

His arrangement led to the now-famous star-shaped street pattern which combined all six avenues in 1693. At the same time, he worked with England's leading stonemason Edward Pierce to design and erect a sundial pillar at the convergence of the streets. Using the pillar’s central column as its “seventh” style, the structure was built with six sundial faces, and Seven Dials was born.

The stunning aesthetic of Neal’s work, however, did not attract wealthy residents as planned. This was partly due to the construction of the buildings and their lack of sufficient quality, which led to quick deterioration. Also leading to its demise was its lack of a single owner. In the 1730s, then owner James Joyce broke up the land and sold off the triangular sections separately, making it hard to enforce Neal’s vision of an aristocratic community.

Over the next few years, it became a site for cheap housing, naturally lending itself to hordes of unskilled laborers and immigrant families. In 1773, the area’s great symbol—the sundial pillar—was demolished. “I went to the British Library to look at newspapers from the period and found it was knocked down because the mob used to meet there and it had become one of the most violent streets in London,” David Bieda of Seven Dials Trust and a local historian and former resident told the BBC.

Finally, in 1974 it was declared a Conservation Area and restoration projects began to take shape to protect and improve the existing physical character of the area. At the time, nearly 90 percent of the homes were vacant—many having been so for over 40 years—and numerous buildings hadn’t been worked on in 150 years. With this came new life; social and private homes were taking over the once rundown avenues.

Boasting a new population of approximately 1,500 people, streets were repainted, a Housing Action Area Committee was formed, chic lanterns were installed and plans to restore the sundial pillar were in the works. Enough money was raised in 1989 (around USD $772K) to resurrect the pillar and today, it stands as a symbol of Seven Dials’ history and regeneration.

Located on Monmouth Street, Covent Garden Hotel is now a favorite of celebrities when visiting London and its film hub, Leicester Square. Tucked away in an inconspicuous area, stars and high-profile guests enjoy the discreet nature of the five-star property. Its cinema room is also often used by directors for screenings and to view rushes of films. Madonna, Amy Adams, Courtney Love, Peter Jackson, Tim Robbins, Meryl Streep, Kiefer Sutherland and Kate Winslet are among its notable guests.

If you’re looking to own property here, prices range anywhere from USD $134,000 for a one-bedroom flat to around USD $3M for a six-bedroom house. Over 320 years later, Seven Dials is finally what Neale envisioned, a gathering place for cultured, wealthy and trendsetting locals and visitors.