Chiltern Firehouse

Chiltern Firehouse was packed to the rafters before the paint was even dry, and it’s been a favorite among famous names from both sides of the Atlantic ever since. What’s the secret? The setting, in a converted Victorian firehouse in a stylish corner of Marylebone, is suitably full of character. As for personalities, a hotel only attracts big names if it can deliver on the promises of classic hospitality: this means balancing glamour and style with an air of absolute privacy and discretion.

The décor is perfectly measured, the whole experience designed down to the smallest detail by hotelier André Balazs, Studio KO, and the Chiltern’s in-house creative team. The result is something that looks and feels effortless, as though it just fell into place, which is of course an effect that requires meticulous, painstaking work.

As a hotel it’s surprisingly intimate, just twenty-six rooms and suites, all of them with fireplaces and sumptuous Art Deco bathrooms. They’re cozy and warm, above all else, the absolute antithesis of the aggressively overstyled boutique-hotel rooms of decades past. And as a hotel guest you’ll have access not just to the Chiltern Firehouse restaurant, but to the inner sanctum that is the Ladder Shed, the bar-within-a-bar that’s limited to hotel residents and the occasional atmosphere-improving interloper. Hospitality is, among other things, the art of creating places where people want to be — and by that standard, the Chiltern is a smashing success.