L'oscar London

If you’re the literary type, you might be won over by the prospect of a hotel inspired by Oscar Wilde — and if interior design is your medium, you may be more thrilled at the prospect of Jacques Garcia’s first London hotel. L’oscar London certainly begins with promising material, in a landmark Baroque-style Baptist church just yards from Holborn station. But it’s what they’ve done with the place that really impresses; this is a vision of London that Wilde surely would have preferred to the Victorian one in which he lived.

For both Wilde and Garcia are known for decadence, in different ways, and L’oscar is nothing if not decadent. The rooms and suites are decorated in hyper-saturated jewel tones, with plenty of Art Deco elegance and a pervasive birds-and-butterflies motif. It’d be among the most romantic hotels in Paris; in London it’s practically without equal.

The building’s original purpose has furnished the name for the Baptist Bar, where cocktails named for Biblical references are served alongside live music. L’oscar Restaurant, on the other hand, takes its inspiration from Paris by way of an homage to Venetian architecture, serving classic bistro fare in a darkly opulent dining room.