The Rows

Medieval covered galleries on two levels — a shopping street found nowhere else in the world

The Rows are Chester's most distinctive feature and one of the most unusual pieces of urban architecture in Britain. Along the four main streets of the city centre — Eastgate, Bridge, Northgate, and Watergate Streets — a continuous covered walkway runs at first-floor level behind the shops, with open galleries facing the street and steps connecting to both the pavement below and the buildings above.

The result is a city on two levels: you can shop at ground level in the conventional way or walk the raised galleries, looking down into the streets from the timber-framed balconies. The galleries pass through the buildings rather than in front of them, creating covered arcades that predate the Victorian shopping arcade by centuries. They are in active commercial use — the shops are largely the usual high street mix — but the architecture makes even window-shopping unusually enjoyable.

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A story
Nobody has satisfactorily explained why the Rows exist. The most plausible theory is that they developed during the medieval period on top of the rubble of Roman buildings — the street level outside is ground floor, and the gallery level sits on top of the old Roman floors. The black-and-white half-timbered facades above the galleries date mostly from the Victorian period, when Chester's architects enthusiastically rebuilt many of the medieval originals in a more picturesque style. The underlying structure, however, is genuinely medieval.

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