Location from Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
A hidden cobblestoned shopping street in London, accessible through the Leaky Cauldron, where witches and wizards buy wands, robes, cauldrons, broomsticks, and everything else a magical life requires.
Diagon Alley is the first glimpse most Muggle-born children get of the wizarding world, and it is designed to overwhelm. Everything Harry saw on his first visit — the stacked cauldrons, the apothecary's barrels of dragon liver, the children ogling the Firebolt — was calculated to say: this world is real, and it is magnificent. The alley runs on a contained economy of Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts, all minted and stored by the goblins of Gringotts, whose vaults extend miles beneath London. The shops have been here for centuries; Ollivanders has sold wands since 382 BC. During Voldemort's second rise the alley became a shadow of itself — shops boarded up, Dark Arts propaganda plastered on walls, Ministry officials conducting blood-status checks. It recovered. It always recovers. Wizards need to buy things.
A long, winding cobblestoned street packed with colorful shopfronts — Ollivanders (wands), Flourish and Blotts (books), Madam Malkin's (robes), Eeylops Owl Emporium, Quality Quidditch Supplies, and dozens more. The street buzzes with witches and wizards in robes, children pressing noses to shop windows, owls hooting from cages. Gringotts Wizarding Bank rises at the far end, a snow-white marble building with bronze doors guarded by goblins. The brick archway from the Leaky Cauldron opens and closes behind visitors.
Also known as: Diagon Alley, the Alley