Qualla: Victoria Square, Birmingham

Victoria Square, Birmingham: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Miller, CC BY-SA 2.0. Birmingham measures all its road-sign distances from Victoria Square. If a sign in Edgbaston says three miles to the city centre, that is three miles to the spot where the pedestrians cross between the Town Hall and the Council House, give or take. The square was renamed in honour of Queen Victoria on 10 January 1901. She died twelve days later. The marble statue Henry Barber commissioned, sculpted by Thomas Brock, was unveiled at her diamond jubilee and outlasted her by half a century before being recast in bronze in 1951. For most of the 20th century the place was a roaring traffic junction; in 1992 the council pedestrianised it, ran an international design competition for a water feature, and ended up with a fountain so absurdly camp that locals nicknamed it the Floozie in the Jacuzzi. The square is, in other words, perfectly Birmingham: serious civic ambition wrapped around an enormous reclining nude.

Image: Andrew Miller | CC BY-SA 2.0

Victoria Square, Birmingham: The Bodies Under Christ Church

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benwaddington, CC BY-SA 4.0. Part of the square was once a churchyard. Christ Church, built between 1805 and 1813 on the site, was demolished in 1899 as the city centre redeveloped. The catacombs beneath the church held around six hundred bodies, including that of John Baskerville, the great Birmingham print...

Image: Benwaddington | CC BY-SA 4.0

Victoria Square, Birmingham: A Statue, A Sceptre, and a Recasting

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Parrot of Doom, CC BY-SA 3.0. The 1901 marble statue of Victoria became a fixture of the square almost as quickly as the queen had become a fixture of British identity. After half a century of soot and weather, Birmingham decided in 1951 that the marble had degraded too far to save. The sculptor William Bloye...

Image: Parrot of Doom | CC BY-SA 3.0

Victoria Square, Birmingham: The Floozie in the Jacuzzi

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lee Jordan, CC BY-SA 2.0. When the council ran an international competition in 1992 for a new central water feature, they wanted something dramatic. The Indian-born British sculptor Dhruva Mistry won. His piece, formally titled The River, depicts a reclining bronze female nude in a great rectangular pool,...

Image: Lee Jordan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Victoria Square, Birmingham: The Iron Man and the Trustee Savings Bank

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Mabbett, CC BY 2.0. Antony Gormley's Iron: Man stands six metres tall on the south side of the square, a single rusting body cast in his characteristic slim, slightly leaning form. The Trustee Savings Bank donated the sculpture to the city in March 1993 when the bank's headquarters were located alon...

Image: Andy Mabbett | CC BY 2.0

Victoria Square, Birmingham: Where the City Gathers

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anneli Salo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Every November the square fills up for the Frankfurt Christmas Market, the largest authentic German market outside Germany and Austria, with wooden huts selling glühwein and bratwurst and ornaments. The city's official Christmas tree, donated each year by the Swedish engineering ...

Image: Anneli Salo | CC BY-SA 3.0