The Peninsula London

Hyde Park Corner is among the very few London addresses that could carry a hotel of this scale, and The Peninsula London was built from the ground up to take it. Wellington Arch stands opposite, Belgravia begins behind, and a landscaped courtyard puts a moment of quiet between the traffic and the front door.

Peter Marino designed the rooms and suites, and his hand shows in the material rather than the flourish: British furniture, British artwork, deep carpets and dressing areas sized as though somebody intended to unpack. Dining is a reason in itself, at Brooklands by Claude Bosi up on the roof and, at the far end of the building, at Canton Blue. Between them they cover a good deal of what London does well and a good deal of what it has imported and kept.

A corner of Belgravia

The site is the point. Wellington Arch and the park stand on one side, the white stucco of Belgravia on the other, and Hyde Park Corner carries London past the door at a volume the courtyard is designed to absorb. Being new is an advantage here rather than an apology: the building was planned around its address, so the public rooms fall where they should and nothing has been forced into a shape it was not built for.

Peter Marino’s London rooms

The interiors avoid the pastiche a Belgravia address might invite. British furniture and artwork sit against hand-tufted carpets, and the bathrooms of the Premier Rooms are cut from honey onyx. Those rooms measure 51 to 58 square metres and face Grosvenor Crescent and Halkin Street, while other categories look onto the courtyard, the park or Wellington Arch. The outlook shapes a stay as much as the floor plan does: a streetscape, a stretch of greenery or the quieter inward view, each of them a different London.

Brooklands and Canton Blue

Brooklands by Claude Bosi takes the roof, with modern British cooking and a dining room drawn from British aviation and motoring, and it is a restaurant to build an evening around rather than to fit in around one. Canton Blue works at the other end of the building and the other end of the story, its Chinese kitchen and richly detailed rooms taken from the long meeting of Asia and Britain. The Lobby keeps the daylight ritual, with afternoon tea and live music.