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Bristol's Top Shopping Destinations: Cabot Circus and Broadmead Explained
The city centre's main retail districts, from a covered mall to independent streets.
How we reported this
Cabot Circus is a large covered shopping centre in the heart of Bristol, sitting adjacent to the older Broadmead shopping district in the city centre. Together they form the main retail area for shoppers visiting the city.
The wider Cabot Circus development contains shops, offices, a hotel, around 250 apartments and an Odeon cinema, making it a mixed use district rather than a shopping mall alone. Its distinctive curved glass roof has become a recognisable feature of the centre.
The centre covers a total floor space of about 139,350 square metres, of which roughly 92,900 square metres is retail outlets and leisure facilities. That scale gives it room for a broad mix of high street names and larger stores under one roof.
Cabot Circus opened in September 2008 after a planning and building project that ran for around ten years and cost in the region of 500 million pounds. It reshaped this part of the city centre and drew shopping activity towards the eastern edge of Broadmead.
For visitors, the combination of Cabot Circus and Broadmead puts most major retailers within a compact area that is easy to explore on foot. It is well connected to the rest of the centre, so shopping can be combined with a wider day out in the city.
Broadmead, the older of the two districts, has long been the traditional home of high street shopping in Bristol, and the arrival of Cabot Circus extended that offer with newer units and leisure space. Between them the two areas cover a broad range of shops and price points.
The district is well served by public transport and sits within walking distance of the old city and the harbourside, so a shopping trip can easily be paired with a visit to nearby attractions. Cafes, restaurants and the cinema make it a place to spend time as well as to shop.
The redevelopment that brought Cabot Circus to the city was one of the larger regeneration projects Bristol has seen, reshaping the eastern side of the centre and adding homes and workplaces alongside the retail units. For shoppers today, the result is a compact, weatherproof core of stores that complements the more traditional streets of Broadmead next door.
Sources: Cabot Circus, Wikipedia.