Kimpton Fitzroy London

Kimpton Fitzroy London occupies the former Hotel Russell, a Grade II-listed terracotta building on the eastern side of Russell Square, designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll and opened in 1900. Doll's own dining room later became the model for the first-class saloon on the RMS Titanic, a detail the hotel still trades on. After an extensive renovation, the property reopened under its present name in October 2018, its marble hall, carved caryatids and mosaic floors intact and its guest rooms and event spaces rebuilt around them.

Arrival is through an arcade of marble columns onto a mosaic zodiac floor, with Palm Court beyond: a glazed courtyard restaurant set under full-grown olive trees. Fitz's Bar, off the lobby, is darker and more clubbable, its walls hung salon-style with contemporary art and its back-bar lit gold beneath a disco ball. The hotel's restored Ballroom is the standout for private events: a double-height room with an ornate coffered ceiling, a mezzanine gallery and its own entrance on Bernard Street, holding up to 300 for a seated dinner and 350 for a reception.

Nine further rooms sit alongside it: Keynes and Woolf both take a seated dinner for thirty, Bell and the combinable Carrington and Grant suit smaller private dinners, and Eliot, Moore and Forster are sized for boardroom meetings. Palm Court itself can be taken privately too. Between the ballroom, the marble hall and the smaller suites, it is a hotel built to host everything from an intimate dinner to a full building takeover.