The Soho Hotel

London, the Soho quarter

London is an enormous and dynamic city teeming with people. Founded on the banks of the Thames more than 2,000 years ago by the Romans, the city continued to expand in tentacle like fashion and now consists of a multitude of villages, each with its own identity. The Soho quarter, located in the West End, in the center of London, has been notorious for the sex industry over the past 200 years, and since the dawn of the 20^th century, it is also a neighborhood for writers, artists and intellectuals. It has also become the gay quarter and the birthplace of London’s “swinging sixties” fashions as well as for its mythical rock music clubs. Originally, Soho was a duck hunting area, before becoming London’s French quarter, where it welcomed Protestants fleeing France after the Edict of Nantes granting Protestants equality was revoked. In the late 18^th century, it became the city’s red light district after the opening of the notorious bordello known as Hooper’s Hotel. In the 1970s, Soho inspired musical groups such as the Kinks and the Who and became the most provocative, eccentric and avant-garde quarter of London. Overflowing with pubs, discos, concert halls, theatres and cinemas, it’s the ideal place for shopping, entertainment or for having a leisurely drink.

A chic design hotel

The celebrated Soho Hotel is located at the end of an impasse accessible from Dean Street. Tim and Kit Kemp, a couple known throughout the hotel business, took an old parking lot and turned it into a hotel filled with contemporary works of art. In the entrance hall with its red walls and parquet floors, a huge porcelain Botero cat impassively welcomes visitors. Kit Kemp, a renowned designer, decorated the hotel with a clever combination of English tradition and modern day tastes.

The 91 rooms and suites are each different from one another, although they are all spacious, incredibly well lit and with a superb view of the bricks and roofs of London. The fascinating bed heads, the standing lamps with immense lampshades, the elegant, contemporary furniture and the use of color and luxurious textures give each room the chic and glamour characteristic of Kit Kemp’s work. Linen and velvet, floral and striped motifs, gentle and intense colors, ornate textures and raw materials all blend together incredibly well. “Must Have”, the Soho’s suites on the top floor of the building, have private terraces with stunning views of the city. To relax after a day of shopping, the library is the ideal spot with its two cream colored couches, fireplace and incomparable choice of books.

For an early evening drink, the bar with its huge Alexander Hollweg fresco is the place to go, before settling into the polka dot Refuel armchairs for dinner. And if you’re still in the hotel on Sunday morning, you can enjoy the brunch while watching the private screening of a film in one of the two movie theatres furnished with red leather and cowhide Poltrona Frau armchairs.

Chinatown is also part of Soho, located around Gerrard Street, where a temple entrance welcomes visitors to this lively neighborhood in which the famous British phone boots have been restyled to resemble pagodas.