Landmark Hotel London

The Landmark Hotel London is a luxury five-star hotel in Marylebone, a luxurious area of central London between Oxford Street and Regents Park. It has 300 rooms and suites and is a grade two listed building.  The hotel is great for international travellers, with complimentary newspapers in five languages and staff members who say they can speak a total of 47 languages. Multilingual indeed.

The room grades begin at superior and rise through luxury, deluxe and executive to family and suites. The decor throughout is in keeping with the hotel's Victorian origins, which plenty of antique furniture among the reproductions. Only a bona fide antiques dealer will be able to spot which is which.

You enter from Marylebone Road into a dramatic lobby flanked by stone arches. The hotel surround the Winter Garden atrium. For decor, think Victorian grandeur and Empire: bamboo chairs, palm trees and "Noel Coward" at the grand piano.
The Spa and Health Club has a swimming pool, spa (as you'd expect!), steam room and gym. Expect beauty treatments and massages that range from jetlag-killers to aromatherapy facials.

The Landmark Hotel London has a historic past. It first opened as The Great Central Hotel in 1899 and was the last of the great Victorian railway hotels that were built in the golden era of steam. Idealistic  businessman, Sir Edward Watkins, who dreamed of building a rail network linking his very own Great Central Train line to Europe through a Channel Tunnel terminating at Marylebone Station. Sadly, the Great Central Train line Company ran into monetary problems in 1895 before work on the hotel had started. Sir John Blundell Maple, of the furniture company Maples, agreed to purchase the site at a cost of 9d (4.5p) per square foot.

The new owners commissioned designer Robert William Edis, a great champion of the Gothic revival style. The hotel was laid out around a huge central courtyard,  into which carriages came to drop off guests at the centre of the hotel. This central courtyard (now the Winter Garden restaurant) was modified into a dance floor. But it was not to last. After the opulence and luxury of the Victorian era, the austerity that followed allowed no place for a grand hotel like the Landmark and it closed its doors.
It became a convalescent home during the Second World War, before becoming an office building for the military and then the headquarters of the British Railways Board, whose staff referred to it as "The Kremlin".
In 1985, the building was bought by a Japanese comopany and refurbishment work started. In 1995 what was now called the Regent London, was purchased by the Thai-owned Lancaster Landmark Hotel Company Limited and renamed The Landmark London.


The Landmark London
222 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 6JQ