Fitzroy Square, central London

The term oasis is over-used, but it is a fitting description of Fitzroy Square in central London. This is a spacious and largely pedestrianised garden square surrounded by gleaming white Georgian terraces, period lamp-posts and cast-iron railings. Genuinely peaceful, it is hard to believe you are only a couple of hundred yards from the traffic mayhem on the Euston Road. 

There is a rash of blue plaques on the elegant town houses commemorating the fact that everyone from Victorian Prime Minister Lord Salisbury to George Bernard Shaw to Virginia Woolf have lived here. Although the garden itself isn't open to the public, it is well worth taking a stroll round this historic neighbourhood. 8/10