The next neighborhood to the west of Knightsbridge is a mix of posh residences, boutique hotels, and the occasional monument, like the Royal Albert Hall or the Victoria & Albert Museum. A short walk to the north and you're in the verdant Kensington Gardens; east and you'll lighten your wallet in the shops of the Brompton Road.
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Kensington
Number Sixteen is either the coziest boutique hotel in London, or the most luxurious bed and breakfast — we're still not sure. The location, down a sleepy side street in South Kensington, is fairly well hidden; just a row of nineteenth-century Victorian townhouses without so much as a sign to show the way. As a member of Firmdale's Townhouse Collection, it's a more low-key experience than the bigger, more lively Ham Yard or Soho Hotel — Number Sixteen is notable for its intimate scale and its quiet charm. More...
41 Rooms
220 Verified review
701 
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Kensington
The Pelham has long stood apart from London's flashier, more modern boutique hotels. This is the place for anyone who'd rather see tradition updated for a new century, rather than thrown right out the window — and, on a more practical note, anyone who'd prefer a row of townhouses in South Kensington to some converted warehouse in Shoreditch. This is another early Kit Kemp design, mixing contemporary pieces with historical references in equal measure, and presenting a visual style that's quite unified, despite its eclectic origins. More...
50 Rooms
238 Verified Reviews
467
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Kensington
The Ampersand, a whimsical South Kensington boutique hotel with a name to match, is so unabashedly, eccentrically British that it would risk self-parody if it weren't so dashingly pulled together. Housed in an 1888 townhouse, the hotel takes the Victorian taste for eclecticism — curiosities and objets d'art abound — and gives it a thoroughly modern look. The influence of the neighborhood is clearly on display in the 111 rooms and suites, each in one of five themes: botany, music, geometry, ornithology and astronomy. More...
111 Rooms
106 Verified Reviews
120
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Kensington
If you need a respite from the corporate efficiency of London's modern mega-hotels, you'll appreciate the uniquely English spirit of the Gore. This charming boutique hotel is packed with history, its six floors abloom with Victorian eccentricity. The Gore's 50 guestrooms are individually decorated with exotic fabrics, antique furniture and period prints. Judy Garland was a past patron of The Gore, and when you stay in her namesake room you're guaranteed a night's rest in her old gilt wood bed. More...
50 Rooms
208 Verified Reviews
365
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Kensington
This Kensington boutique hotel is something a bit different for the ultra-competitive London hotel scene — neither a chintz-laden country-house fantasy nor the deranged hallucination of an interior designer gone mad, the Rockwell is modern in a way that's sedate, restrained, maybe even a bit Scandinavian, behind that gleaming white Victorian facade. Though it may be short on outsized gestures and over-the-top design statements, the Rockwell is full of personality: the bold patterned wallpapers are a contemporary take on classic English style More...
40 Rooms
309 Verified Reviews
594
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Kensington
Possibly the most theatrical and over-the-top boutique hotel in London or anywhere else, Blakes nevertheless predates by two decades the current mania for individualist boutique hotels, and frankly outpaces them all, at least in terms of sheer eccentricity. It's hard to imagine how shocking this place must have been when its doors opened in the late seventies, densely decorated as it is in an intense East-meets-East style, stuffed to the rafters with Chinese, Japanese and Indian antiques as well as the occasional Egyptian or Venetian curio. More...
47 Rooms
125 Verified Reviews
500
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