Spitalfields
Spitalfields is a district in the east London borough of London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Nearby are the train station "Liverpool Street station " and Brick Lane, which is the site of the popular, dominated by immigrants from Bangladesh, Sunday Market Brick Lane Market. The name of the district is due to a contraction of hospital fields (Eng. " hospital fields "). 1197 was founded an abbey there with the Hospital St. Mary's Hospital. Since the 17th century there was the traditional fruit and vegetable market Old Spitalfields Market, which was relocated in 1991 as the New Spitalfields Market by Leyton in the borough of Waltham Forest. Due to protests by the population, however, this historical market was revived successfully on a part of the old site and attracts 20,000 visitors on Sundays. Spitalfields is now known inter alia as a marketplace for organically produced food.
Spitalfields is also famous for its art scene. 1901, the Whitechapel Art Gallery was built with public funds, "to bring great art to the people of the East End of London " (Eng. " to the people in the East End of London to bring great art "). The building was built by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Art Nouveau style of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery has always enjoyed international recognition and brought, for example, from the late 1950s, the Pop Art this week. Spitalfields is since the early 20th century a preferred place of residence for artists. Today there inter alia, the body artists Gilbert and George Passmore Proesch live (see Gilbert & George ) and the performance artist Stuart Brisley.
In 1612 founded English religious refugees who had returned after several years of asylum stay in the Netherlands to England, in Spitalfields, led by Thomas Helwys the first British Baptist church.
The district was in the 19th century to the slums of London's East End. Two of the alleged victims of Jack the Ripper were found in Spitalfields. On September 8, 1888, the corpse of Annie Chapman was discovered near a doorway of the Hanbury Street and on 9 November 1888, killed Mary Jane Kelly in her apartment near the former Dorset Street.