Sheraton Grand London Park Lane

The hotel opened on Piccadilly in 1927 as The Park Lane Hotel, built by Sir Bracewell Smith to designs by Adie, Button and Partners, and it has kept more of its original Art Deco fabric than almost any other London hotel of its generation. The Ballroom is the reason to come. Grade II listed and spread over three levels, it is one of the last complete Art Deco ballrooms in the city: a sunburst frieze running the length of the room, gilded relief panels, fluted glass chandeliers, a proscenium stage behind a gold curtain and a sprung maple dance floor. Guests arrive through a private street entrance of their own, cross the Silver Gallery with its murals and marble uplighters, and can take a glass on the balcony looking down over the floor.

That gives the house a genuine gala room. The Ballroom takes 500 for dinner and dancing and 1,200 for a reception, which puts it among the very few rooms in Mayfair that can hold a party of that size without borrowing a marquee or a conference hall. Below it sit rooms of a different character: the Tudor Rose on the ground floor, bright and daylit with its own dance floor, and the Oak Room, panelled in solid oak beneath a carved ceiling, which seats 90 and is the room to take for a long table. The Balcony Suite and the Drawing Room handle the smaller end.

The events team is in-house and the kitchen is unusual: this is the only five-star hotel in the West End with a dedicated kosher kitchen, under the supervision of the Federation of Synagogues, and it will also work to a preferred-caterer list for other specialised cuisines. Elsewhere in the building are Mercante for Italian cooking, Smith & Whistle for cocktails and a cigar-friendly terrace, and the Palm Court lounge under its 1927 stained-glass dome, still the best room in the hotel for a drink before you go up.