With double-decker buses or Buckingham Palace guards, the squares of West London are an emblem of the English capital. Rectangular and wooded, they are lined with rows of deep white Victorian residences, with entrances preceded by elegant steps. This is where the Grand Hotel Bellevue on Norfolk Square has just opened, designed as the home of an imaginary couple by decorator Fabrizio Casiraghi.
Behind the heavy glass door, the lobby looks more like a living room than a hotel entrance, with its Persian rug, fireplace, central pedestal table, beige velvet sofas and bright orange walls. An atmosphere which continues in the listed stairwell, on the floor covered with a carpet inspired by Spring by Botticelli, and the corridors decorated with gargoyles and moldings. A house where we would be the guests, invited to sleep in the rooms on the top floor.
The 511 is an adorable pocket hideaway. Designed like a boat cabin, with its raised storage bed where a minibar is hidden, it offers a view of the foliage of the square, the London roofs and the sky. Ten square meters worked down to the smallest detail: from the color of the bathroom tiles to the porcelain cameos on the bedroom wall or the medieval-inspired moldings, from the comfort of the mattress to the softness of the sheets… Enough to lavish a welcome tranquility after a day wandering the streets of London.
At 300 meters: toast to Queen Victoria
At the corner of two streets, with its sign with golden letters and its pots of geraniums attached to the facade, The Victoria, inaugurated in the first year of the reign of the queen of the same name, is the English pub as we know it. conceived. With its welcoming bar on the ground floor and, upstairs, its rooms decorated with floral wallpaper, red velvet curtains and wall paneling, it is said that Charles Dickens wrote part of Our Mutual Friend (The mutual friend). A trip back in time where you can sit down to drink a pint of beer or a Pimm’s and enjoy the atmosphere.
800 meters away: visit the cream of art galleries
Pushing the door of the Lisson Gallery is worth it. You have to move away from Paddington towards the north, then pass under a concrete bridge before following an urban motorway and, finally, take a small anonymous street to find the Grail, one of the best English galleries, founded in 1967 by Nicholas Logsdail. She formerly exhibited Sol LeWitt or Donald Judd, today Ai Weiwei or Otobong Nkanga, who will have the honor of a monographic exhibition from May 23 to August 3 in this vast white cube typical of contemporary art.
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