The Athenaeum Hotel & Residences

The Athenaeum stands at 116 Piccadilly, on the Mayfair edge of Green Park, an independently owned five-star hotel known as much for the living wall of ferns and shrubs that climbs its facade as for the park views from its rooms. It keeps a quieter profile than the grand Park Lane addresses nearby, which is part of the appeal: a townhouse sensibility on a corner site, with its own restaurant, bar and a set of self-contained event rooms rather than a banqueting floor.

For private events the hotel works at an intimate scale. The Hyde Park Suite is the largest room, a daylit, fully air-conditioned space that divides into smaller rooms or opens out for up to eighty, with floor-to-ceiling windows, in-built screens and a sound system that make it as suited to a private dinner as a presentation. Two smaller suites, Green Park and St James', look out over the park and seat around a dozen for a board meeting or a close dinner. The Terrace is the social room: nooks, plush sofas and a wall of glass onto the living-wall greenery, taken whole or by the corner, and a natural setting for a reception or a whisky tasting led by the hotel's barman.

The restaurant, 116, is an Art Deco room serving contemporary British cooking, and it can be taken on exclusive or part-hire so a celebration can spill from dinner into drinks. Menus are seasonal and tailored to the party, with the in-house events team handling food, drink and any music or entertainment. Sound and DJ requirements are arranged on enquiry rather than fixed in place, which suits a hotel that prefers to shape each event around the room it is held in.