The Christmas lights, night markets, main train station and numerous shops and restaurants and office towers are on this thoroughfare.

For many years the street was residential, lined with large oak trees, but by 1850 it had become strongly commercial in character.

Mayor Hercules Jarvis named it Adderley Street in 1850, to honour British Parliamentarian Charles Bowyer Adderley (elevated to the peerage as Baron Norton in 1878) who fought successfully against the plan for the British government to make Cape Town into another penal colony.

In the late 1800s the street was a "riot of ornament" along which around 150 retail shops plied their trade, many with wrought iron decorating the outsides of their buildings.

The upper end marked political and religious authority, the location of St. George's Cathedral and the Supreme Court of South Africa.