Guests of history

THE ROSEWOOD LONDON, A HOTEL WITH A VIVID PERSONALITY THAT COMBINES THE CHARM OF EDWARDIAN ARCHITECTURE WITH A TASTE FOR CONTEMPORARY DESIGN.

High Holborn is a street packed with memories of English culture. Philosophers, artists and writers lived there in the past, Milton and Dickens, William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This elegant urban setting hosts a work of architecture that now contains the Rosewood London, one of the city’s most prestigious hotels, which in turn contains the Grand Manor House Wing, the world’s only suite with its own postal code. Designed in 1914 by H. Percy Monckton, in a sparkling interpretation of the Edwardian style, the building originally housed an insurance company. It has now been transformed as a luxury hotel under the supervision of English Heritage. The project conserves the existing structures and the characteristic features, enhancing them with clearly contemporary spaces. The majestic facade lures visitors to the impressive entrance. Inside, the grand marble staircase extends for seven levels under an elliptical dome. The painstaking restoration has focus on every detail, in a courtly decor tactfully contaminated by modern taste. It involved the intervention of renowned interior designers like Martin Brudnizki, who worked on the Scarfes Bar and the Holborn Dining Room, and Tony Chi, in charge of the corridor, the rooms and the suites. «Tony Chi was asked to create an elegant interior, combining traditional and modern styles», says Michael Bonsor, Managing Director of the Rosewood London. «He has chosen a lush combination of materials, including lacquer, fine wood and prismatic mirrors. Martin Brudnizki also evokes British design and the building’s history in the Holborn Dining Room, incorporating original elements like the tall marble columns. For the Scarfes Bar, he has recreated the atmosphere of an elegant gentlemen’s club». A hotel where guests can enjoy the luxury of a sort of suspension in time, hovering between past and present.

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