City of London Club

Founded in 1832 by a committee of City bankers, merchants and shipowners chaired by the MP John Masterman, the City of London Club is the oldest of the Square Mile's gentlemen's clubs and the only one still in its original building. The Grade II* listed clubhouse, an Italian Palladian design by Philip Hardwick, opened on Old Broad Street in May 1834 and has never moved. Early members included the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel and Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild; Prince Philip served as its royal patron.

The club takes private hire from members and non-members alike, across a barrel-vaulted Main Dining Room, a fireplace-lit Drawing Room hung with the club's own portraits, the panelled Members' Bar, an intimate mahogany-tabled Smoking Room, and the contemporary Churchill's Bar with its adjoining terrace. Twenty guest bedrooms sit above the event floors for residential bookings.

Tucked behind a paved garden off Old Broad Street, close to Liverpool Street and Bank, the club functions as a private address inside the City's financial core — a working institution rather than a themed backdrop.