Functioning as one of the city's retail malls, it is a three-Storey building, which spans over Fairfax Street.

[1] It replaced shops including a large Woolworths on the north side of Fairfax Street, and on the south side Fairfax House (a Co-operative department store opened in March 1962) where the Galleries car park now stands.

[4] In January 2011, the centre was sold to HSBC European Active Real Estate Trust for £50.1 million,[5] and the name was restored to The Galleries.

[7] In 2021, plans were announced to turn the shopping centre over the next five to ten years into a mixed development of residential property, offices and retail space.

Since 2008, The Galleries had struggled to compete with the newer and larger Broadmead shopping mall Cabot Circus.