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FIVE STAR MAGAZINE ISSUE 02
LOVE, LITERATURE, SCANDAL AND TRADITION: THE CADOGAN HOTEL
When we decided to review the Cadogan Hotel, we weren’t sure what to expect. We had received positive reviews, we knew a little bit about its history, and the place it has in the memory and imagination of Londoners, but we were not ready to be so pleasantly enchanted by its bewildering charm and character. That’s when our job is the most rewarding. We went to review a luxury hotel but we ended up falling in love with a building that carries within itself a rich and exciting reverberating soul.
Before reaching the heart of the matter, let’s begin with first impressions. As it happens with people, and with many beautiful and exciting hotels we recommend, the hotel doesn’t look the most sumptuous and glamorous from outside. The building is a town house, bearing an elegant and yet mature and unpretentious style. The reception area of the hotel is small, quiet and unostentatious. There is a large reception desk to the left, a beautiful old style lift in front (the kind where you have to close its rail-like doors before it can start to ascend, or descend), and from the reception area you can see an elegant room beyond with comfortable sofas and armchairs in every corner,low coffee tables in front of them and you can hear whispers, laughter, the sound of teas being stirred, wine being poured, people walking and being served.
It’s only when you reach the bedroom that you feel the need to stop for a minute and look carefully all around you. Everything about the Cadogan Hotel has a theatrical and historical feel to it: From the echoes of your steps on the wooden floorsto the dramatically large and heavy windows with beautiful heavy curtains, ropes and tassels framing them. You start browsing the brochures and you are reminded of the history of the building, and all of a sudden you feel you are at the very spot where nostalgic poets, bohemian intellectuals and powerful city merchants once have been. It’s an inspiring place, even for those with very little artistic tendencies in them.
