The Ampersand Hotel

The Ampersand occupies a five-storey townhouse on Harrington Road, a few steps from South Kensington station and the museums that gave the hotel its subject. It opened in its present form in the summer of 2012, in a building that traded for decades as the Norfolk Hotel. Five themes drawn from the neighbourhood organise the interiors: botany, music, geometry, ornithology and astronomy, carried through the guest rooms and the collections of curiosities on the shelves.

Three private rooms sit together on one floor and can be taken separately or as a suite. The Games Room is the largest, holding 32 seated or 50 standing, with kingfisher-blue shelves of books, games and curiosities, and a full-size ping pong table that can be brought in or left out. The Library seats 17 beneath a specially-curated book collection, with plump armchairs and good daylight. The Dining Room is the smallest and the most formal: an oak banqueting table for ten, a polished basalt floor, and close to a hundred bottles set into the walls behind glass.

The Library and the Games Room together hold 85 standing, which is the ceiling here and the right scale for a reception rather than a ball. Each room carries its own sound system and screen, and every layout is movable. Catering comes from the Apero kitchen downstairs, under the hotel's own head chef. It suits a birthday, a press day, a launch or a private dinner with a finite guest list.