Originally landscaped as an ornamental sunken garden, the area was levelled out and reconfigured in 2002 with a water feature and concrete pavilion by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.

Statues of noted figures such as the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel and John Dalton were laid out along the esplanade.

Perrin's Manchester Handbook of 1857 wrote of the newly inaugurated space:[10][2][9] The open space in front of the infirmary, formerly occupied by a pond of water, has lately been given up to the corporation, and has by them been laid out as a public walk, with fountains, which were first displayed at the inauguration of the Wellington Statue on the 30th of August 1856.The Manchester Royal Infirmary relocated in 1908 to its current site on Oxford Road.

The hospital buildings were completely demolished by April 1910 apart from the outpatients department, which continued to deal with minor injuries and dispense medication on this site until the 1930s.

There was a proposal to erect a new municipal art gallery on the site, and plans were drawn up by the architect Ernest Berry Webber for a large Neoclassical building.

Another scheme put forward by the architect Richard Carpenter was to build a large new replacement for Manchester Cathedral on the site.

[13][8] In the centre of the new gardens the Corporation placed a bronze sculpture entitled Adrift, depicting a family clinging to a raft in a stormy sea.

[13][14] When the Salford painter L. S. Lowry created his 1954 oil painting Piccadilly Gardens, the Coronation Fountain is clearly visible in the centre of the view amid the sunken flower beds.

[8][15][16] During World War II, many warehouse buildings along Parker Street on the southern side of Piccadilly Gardens were destroyed by bombing during the Manchester Blitz.

[20] In 1931, as part of the redevelopment of the site, Parker Street Bus Station was opened on the south side of the gardens, and was extended in 1935.

It was considered by some to be an unwelcoming space, cut off from the main city activity, and its secluded aspect attracted alcoholicsm, vagrants and drug users.

Manchester City Council initiated an international competition for the redesign of Piccadilly Gardens, and in 1998 the winners were announced from a shortlist of six.

Selected species of trees were planted including London Plane, fastigiated oak, flowering pear and magnolia.

[30][31] The Piccadilly Gardens area is frequently criticised as being a haven for drug users, and there have been media reports of spice being openly traded and consumed in public there.

The council has stated that the aim of the £25 million project will be to create a "world class" public space with a "uniquely Mancunian" identity.

From old Victorian warehouses and shops dating from the Industrial Revolution and Manchester's role as the cotton marketing capital to the new office block development which is part of the 21st century regeneration of the square.

Piccadilly Plaza was originally built by Covell Matthews and Partners from 1959 to 1965 and has been recently re-modelled by Leslie Jones Architects in 2001 (this mainly involved replacing the old Chinese style-roofed towers of Bernard House).