The Savoy

It was a dark few years on the London hotel scene while the Savoy was closed for renovations. This was, after all, the original luxury hotel, or at very least the original London luxury hotel, a hotel whose influence is positively Beatlesque, if you’ll forgive the comparison — Beatlesque in the sense that everything that’s happened in high-end hotels since the 1890s is arguably just a variation on a theme introduced by César Ritz, the Savoy’s original general manager, who counts electric lights and en-suite bathrooms among his hospitality innovations. (Yes, that Ritz.)

Now that it’s back in business there’s a sense that all is once again right in the hospitality world. It’s managed by Fairmont, the Canadian luxury-hotel concern, and it’s an inspired choice — if there’s one brand that can be counted on to tread lightly on so historic a hotel, it’s Fairmont.

That’s not to say nothing at all has changed; the Savoy Grill, where Bertie Wooster dined with many an accidental fiancée, is now in the hands of none other than Gordon Ramsay; it’s joined by the more intimate 1890 by Gordon Ramsay, proud recipient of a MICHELIN Star. Meanwhile the once-faded American Bar, century-old icon that it is, was the subject of the sort of restoration that’s normally reserved for Roman antiquities, with every sparkling detail returned to its precise state circa 1889. And then there’s Kaspar’s, a dazzling Art Deco–style seafood bar that, charmingly, the Savoy bills as its informal restaurant — where guests can casually snack on Osetra caviar beneath silver leaf ceilings and Murano glass columns while gazing at panoramic views of the Thames.

It’s only in the rooms that you’ll find much of anything you’d be tempted to call “contemporary,” but that’s just as well, as running water and electric light are no longer the extravagances they once were. And though they’re modern in function, the equal of any high-end hotel room anywhere, they’re true to the Savoy’s original styles: Art Deco on one side, Edwardian on the other.

Modern hotels abound in London, and we’re partial to the idea that it takes all kinds to make a world — but when Edwardian opulence is what you’re after, the Savoy is your best shot at recapturing a long-gone era. And now that the original is back in business, there’s no need to settle for one of its legion of imitators.