Venues in Westminster
Westminster hosts at state-room scale — Whitehall’s banqueting halls, riverside institutions and Grade I interiors built for occasions of record.
Quilon
Westminster — Indian Restaurant
A MICHELIN-starred South-West coastal Indian restaurant at St James' Court, reimagined in 2025, with a private dining room for up to twenty beneath a canopy of brass marigolds.
National Gallery
Westminster — Event Space
Up to 2,000 guests
Private evening hire of the National Gallery's picture galleries on Trafalgar Square, from an intimate terrace to a full-building buyout.
Mauro Colagreco
Westminster — French Restaurant
Up to 50 guests
A Michelin-starred, nature-driven restaurant on the ground floor of Raffles London at The OWO, with a twenty-seat chef's table, Mauro's Table, for private dining.
The Guards Bar & Lounge
Westminster — Cocktail Bar
The corner-pavilion bar of Raffles London at The OWO, entered from Horse Guards, with oak panelling, chandeliers and a cocktail list of British and further-flung flavours.
The Spy Bar
Westminster — Cocktail Bar
Up to 52 guests
A residents' speakeasy hidden in former MI5 vaults beneath Raffles London at The OWO — burgundy brick, a Goldfinger Aston Martin behind the bar, and no cameras past the 007 door.
National Portrait Gallery
Westminster — Event Space
Up to 300 guests
A Grade I-listed gallery on Trafalgar Square, rebuilt in 2023 — nine salon-hung galleries, a vaulted bar and a rooftop restaurant over Whitehall, all exclusively hireable.
The Guardsman
Westminster — Hotel
A purpose-built boutique hotel near Buckingham Gate with the feel of a private members' club: six residences, a book-lined library, and the whole house available for exclusive hire.
Great Scotland Yard Hotel
Westminster — Hotel
Up to 140 guests
The former Metropolitan Police headquarters off Whitehall, now a five-star hotel with a hidden whisky bar and a private Grade II townhouse next door.
Kerridge's Bar & Grill
Westminster — British Restaurant
Up to 90 guests
Tom Kerridge's British grill inside Corinthia London — a rotisserie-led dining room, a separate bar, and a wood-panelled private room for up to sixteen.
The Rubens at the Palace
Westminster — Hotel
Up to 300 guests
A 161-room Red Carnation hotel opposite Buckingham Palace's Royal Mews, its nine named event rooms and adjoining bbar building running from an intimate boardroom to a 150-capacity suite.
/ About Westminster▾
Westminster is the seat of British government, and has been a centre of power for close to a thousand years. The Palace of Westminster began as a royal residence in the eleventh century — Westminster Hall, raised in 1097, still survives — and became the settled home of Parliament after the court moved to Whitehall in the sixteenth century. Fire destroyed most of the palace in 1834; the Gothic Revival building that replaced it, designed by Charles Barry with A. W. N. Pugin and completed in 1860, gives the riverside its familiar outline and clock tower.
Ceremony is written into the ground here. Westminster Abbey, a Benedictine foundation of the 960s rebuilt in its present Gothic form, has been the coronation church of every English and British monarch since William the Conqueror in 1066, as well as the setting for royal weddings and state funerals. Along Whitehall run the government offices, the Cenotaph and the Banqueting House, the surviving hall of the old royal palace at Whitehall. The district's rooms are correspondingly formal — panelled state interiors, institutional halls and grand hotel spaces built for occasion.
St James's Park — the oldest of the royal parks, enclosed by Henry VIII in 1532 — spreads to the north, its lake and lawns giving Westminster an unexpectedly green heart between the government quarter and the palaces. This is state Westminster rather than the clubland of neighbouring St James's, and the two are easily confused. Westminster and St James's Park Underground stations serve the District, Circle and Jubilee lines, with Victoria terminus a short distance west — one of London's principal gateways for rail and coach.