The Hotel Cafe Royal offers serenity amid the London crowds

THE Hotel Cafe Royal blends 21st-century style with historic grandeur in the heart of London's West End.

Cafe Royal

IT is said that if you stand in Piccadilly Circus for long enough you will eventually bump into everyone you know.

The only problem with that idea is that today you wouldn't want to stand in Piccadilly Circus any longer than it takes for the lights to change so that you can cross the street and get out of there.

For many, the small circle formed by the intersection of Regent Street, Coventry Street and Piccadilly and known for its neon advertising signs and statue of Eros is the very centre of London, and for others it's a place to be avoided. Although changes are afoot - mostly about traffic and pedestrian flow - under the direction of the area's landowners, the Crown Estate, it is still an area seemingly oversupplied with tourist shops, fastfood outlets and mass-market global chain stores, not to mention teeming with people.

It's not where you would expect to find London's newest luxury hotel, but the Hotel Cafe Royal is right here smack in the middle of one of the busiest, noisiest and most crowded areas of London. While this part of London is not geographically far from the rarefied and genteel streets of Mayfair (it's about a five-minute walk to Savile Row) where you would expect to find such an establishment, it's miles away in terms of atmosphere and street life. London has plenty of famous five-star hotels known for their grandeur, their history, their famous guests and sheer opulence - The Ritz, The Savoy, Claridges, The Connaught, The Dorchester come to mind - but none is in a location as brash and as tourist-central as Cafe Royal.

The hotel is so close to Piccadilly Circus as to make you feel as if you're right in the heart of it. One of the hotel's suites, the Marquis Suite, actually looks directly into the giant screens of Piccadilly Circus. They almost feel as if they're part of the room, or that you could reach out of the window and touch them. It's wow factor with a capital W. In London a luxury hotel room with a view is a rare thing; rarer still are views of this bustling intersection. Many of the hotel's 159 rooms have views either up Regent Street, or down St James to the Houses of Parliament or of Piccadilly Circus itself. All are framed through triple-glazed windows, which means you can see the sights from your room but, thankfully, not hear them.

The Hotel Cafe Royal occupies three Grade-1 listed John Nash-designed buildings at the bottom of Regent Street that were acquired by the Tel-Aviv-listed property development company the Alrov Group for its The Set hotels division. The original Cafe Royal was a bar and restaurant rather than a hotel and dates back to 1865. Many legendary figures in British society once congregated here: Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, Noel Coward, Elizabeth Taylor, David Bowie and Mick Jagger all hung out at various points.

Cafe Royal was established by Nicholas Thevenon, a French wine merchant who fled to Britain in 1863 to avoid bankruptcy in France and changed his name to Daniel Nichols. It closed in 2008 after the Alrov Group acquired it and the adjoining properties on either side on a 125-year lease for a reported 80 million. Many of the original fixtures and fittings were auctioned off before a four-year transformation into a five-star hotel began.

The Hotel Cafe Royal opened at the end of last year and is the second hotel Alrov Group has opened under The Set banner. The first, The Conservatorium, in a 19th century neo-gothic building, opened at the end of 2011 in Amsterdam and a third, The Lutetia, is being created in a 1910 building on Paris's Left Bank.

The transformation of the three Regent Street buildings into a luxury hotel was overseen by British architect David Chipperfield. Chipperfield has a reputation as a master of minimalism but is also well known for his intellectual approach and meticulous reviving of historic buildings such the Neues Museum in Berlin. What Chipperfield and his team have achieved at Cafe Royal is to create a hotel that is grand and suited to its location in the centre of London but at the same time contemporary and design-driven.

This is by no means the preservation of a historic building in aspic and, as such, the design of the new hotel has had its share of critics: The Telegraph said in a review of the main restaurant, Ten Room, that there was "nothing wrong with it that would not be corrected by the application of a medium-sized demolition ball".

In the mind of The Telegraph's reviewer, the room had an "aura of cultivated sterility" about it. As if taking that criticism to heart, the owners of the hotel have decided to refurbish the Ten Room and change its colour scheme from red and grey to earth-brown tones to create a warmer ambience. The rejig of the Ten Room is due to happen this month.

There are historic elements throughout the public spaces of the hotel, such as the marble staircase and stained-glass windows at the Regent Street entrance (, there is another entrance in Air Street) and the painted ceilings of the Domino Room. There are also six historic suites at Cafe Royal that blend historic elements with contemporary design. For example, the Tudor Suite has an original Tudor fireplace and wood-panelled walls, while the Empire Suite - at 212sqm the largest suite in the hotel - has gold leaf details. The Dome Suite was originally the Club Room of the County Fire Office when it occupied the building adjacent to the original Cafe Royal. Today the sixth-floor suite sits at the top of the hotel and has two spacious terraces with views over London's rooftops. As a nod to the Cafe Royal's rock'n'roll days underneath the copper-domed rotunda sits an oversized mirror ball. The suite also has its own DJ booth and a serious speaker system.

All 159 guestrooms have hand-carved Carrara marble baths. The baths were originally intended for only the suites, but the owners were so impressed with them they ordered more for the entire hotel, which led to delays in construction as well as a substantial reinforcement of the floors to be able to handle the weight of them.

When it came to the design of even the smallest guestrooms - which are about 35sqm - Chipperfield ensured that you don't see the bed immediately after opening the door, to make them feel more like suites or apartments. The guestrooms have parquetry floors and muted colour schemes with furnishings in the most luxurious leather. In the Portland rooms, the walls have been cast in plaster to represent the style of exterior masonry on Regent Street; and in the Mansard rooms the walls have been panelled in English oak. The rooms are a unique mix of minimal chic, with nods to the building's history and location combined with subtle touches of luxury. All guestrooms have Frette bed linen and Bang & Olufsen entertainment systems. The hotel's spa and 18m lap pool are due to open soon.

Hotel Cafe Royal is a member of The Set group of hotels as well as Leading Hotels of the World. To book: [phone], hotelcaferoyal.com. Or book through Leading Hotels of the World on 02 9377 8444 or lhw.com.