Interior Design and Decorating

As regular readers of mine know, your hotel reporter's strength is not actually staying up to the early hours, so we will have to take Virgilio's word on this one. What we can say is this is truly one of Europe's most fun luxury hotels. Imagine Italian design transported into London tradition and this is what you have. The five-floor brick building may look its century-age outside but, once inside, you are in a different world. Black and gold are the colors that permeate the lobby that reaches round, so to speak, to the bar - which has black Murano chandeliers overhead - and, continuing in a right wheel movement, to Brunello restaurant, and, weather permitting, back out to the terrace, looking across Hyde Park Gate to the Gardens. Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived, is about two hundred yards north across the parkland. There are 66 rooms and suites, decorated - uniquely - by Gilles Dez. Room 208, looking out over a side street, De Vere Gardens, has a wooden f...