Built in 1885 as the Metropole Hotel and later requisitioned as the headquarters of the Ministry of Defence during both World Wars, the great Portland stone and terracotta wedge at the corner of Whitehall Place and Northumberland Avenue carries more of London's political history within its walls than almost any other hospitality address in the city. When Corinthia Hotel London opened here in 2011 following a meticulous restoration by Dexter Moren Associates, the challenge was to honour that accumulated gravity without embalming it — to make a Victorian palazzo feel genuinely alive rather than reverently preserved. The result across 294 rooms and suites holds that tension fairly well, with interior design by Goddard Littlefair deploying pale silks, dark-stained walnut joinery, and leather-upholstered headboards in a palette drawn from amber, taupe, and plum. The interiors visible in the images confirm the range of registers the designers were asked to sustain simultaneously. The Northall restaurant works the building's original curved volumes to considerable effect — cognac leather banquettes beneath soaring arched windows, antique-mirrored panels doubling the depth of the room, a coffered ceiling chandelier pulling warmth downward. The Bassoon bar reads as something altogether darker and more theatrical, its deep forest-green dome, oxblood Chesterfield seating, and a suspended metallic suit sculpture giving the space an eccentric, cabinet-of-curiosities energy that sits in pointed contrast to the gold-and-cream civility of the guest rooms above.

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