A hot air balloon launching in front of the Royal Crescent

The Royal Crescent is an exclusive residential estate of 30 houses, laid out in an arc, in the city of Bath in England. It was designed by John Wood the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774. It is amongst the greatest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the United Kingdom.

The houses in the Crecent are a mixture of tenures - most are privately owned but a substantial minority of the property is owned by a housing association. This must be some of England's most exclusive social housing. Many of the houses in the Crescent have been split up into flats.

Number 1 Royal Crescent is a museum which exhibits how wealthy owners of the period may have furnished such a house.

The Royal Crescent Hotel occupies numbers 15 and 16 Royal Crescent.

The Royal Crescent is a popular location for the launch of hot air balloons, which takes place in the summer, typically early morning or late evening.

The Royal Crescent is one of the best known images and landmarks of Georgian Bath and although they cannot pass directly infront of it, the city's tourbuses can be seen regularly passing along Royal Avenue only slightly further down the slope in Royal Victoria Park.

Together with his father John Wood the Elder, John Wood the Younger was explicitly interested in occult and masonic symbolism; perhaps their creation of largest scale was their joint work of the Royal Crescent and the Circus (originally called "the King's Circus"), which from the air can be observed to be a giant circle and crescent, symbolising the soleil-lune*, the sun and moon.

• The "Soleil-Lune" was also a type of cake once made in Bath. It actually gave its name to "Sally Lunn's", a café located in one of the oldest buildings in the city.

External links

• Photo of The Royal Crescent