Cafe Royal Hotel

The Cafe Royal Hotel is due to open in 2012.

Expected to be completed in time for the 2012 Olympics, the new Cafe Royal Hotel is part of The Quadrant development which takes in the Cafe Royal, Regent Palace Hotel and Quadrant Arcade blocks and transforms them into a mixed-use development. Artists such as Augustus John, James McNeill Whistler and Aubrey Beardsley dined there and, most famously, Oscar Wilde held court there, but now the Royal Cafe is to be turned into a 160-bedroom five star hotel. The development covers a massive 93,000 square metre (one million square feet) area in a prime Regent Street location overlooking Piccadilly Circus. Small wonder it has been described as the "most ambitious development ever undertaken on Regent Street". Plans for the Cafe Royal Hotel put forward by David Chipperfield Architects involve the retention of existing Grade I listed Louis XVI interiors, including the famous Grill Room, the marble Entrance Hall, and Domino Room. In addition, the original - previously obscured - Ten Room is to be reworked as a new double height foyer on Air Street. Five other historic rooms will be converted into large VIP suites, including one beneath the copper dome at the apex of Piccadilly Circus and Glasshouse Street, with views of Big Ben and St James's Park. As befits its five-star status, the new state of the art Café Royal Hotel will include a spa, gym and restaurant. We think Oscar would have approved.