The handsome triangular market square at the heart of medieval Hitchin still hosts a market twice a week — a general market on Tuesday and Saturday, plus a popular farmers' market on the first Saturday of the month and a French market several times a year. The square is framed by a continuous run of timber-framed and Georgian shopfronts, an old coaching inn (the Sun Hotel), and the Corn Exchange with its tall Italianate clock tower.
Even out of market hours the surrounding streets — Sun Street, High Street, Bucklersbury — are a pleasing wander of independent shops, bookshops, cafés and bakeries. Pubs, including the timber-framed Cock Inn on Bucklersbury, line the back streets.