Most of the buildings along the street are listed, meaning they are of national importance due to their architecture or history.

[1] The street roughly follows the line of the via praetoria of Eboracum, the Roman city, which ran between what are now St Helen's Square and York Minster.

This part of the street lay in the Liberty of St Peter's, associated with the Minster, and many of its buildings belonged to the church, the whole area soon becoming built up, mostly with tenements.

[6] The street runs north-east from St Helen's Square to the junction of High and Low Petergate, beyond which its continuation is Minster Gates.

Among the most notable on the north-west side are numbers 54, 56, and 58 Stonegate, 14th-century timber-framed buildings; the 12th-century Norman House, in a courtyard off the road; 48 to 52, and 44 to 46, each with 15th-century origins; Ye Olde Starre Inne, in a courtyard, the oldest continuously operating pub in the city, with a sign which has spanned the road since 1733; numbers 12 to 14, in part dating from the 14th-century; and the early-17th century 8 Stonegate.