London’s only Relais & Châteaux hotel sprawls over four red brick Victorian town houses built by Lord Chelsea, its sleeping quarters reached by a warren of staircases and hallways and serviced by a ‘very old-fashioned lift’.

On a quiet street moments from the King’s Road, two red brick Victorian mansions, built in what Pevsner describes as the ‘semi-Dutch, semi-Queen Anne style’, conceal a veritable palazzo.

A peaceful retreat, Charlotte and Matt Goodsall’s Belgravia hotel occupies twin Georgian town houses within walking distance of some of the city’s most popular tourist spots.

A long-time favourite of its royal neighbours, this Belgravia grand dame is ‘charmingly old-school’, with red-liveried footmen, Michelin-starred restaurant, and one of the largest private gardens in London.

A pocket-handkerchief-sized park with London plane trees and a statue of the young Mozart lies just across the road from this stuccoed Victorian pub in Pimlico, now a buzzy bar, café and restaurant with four guest bedrooms.

Overlooking Buckingham Palace, this chic, discreet hotel on the fifth floor of a historic building gives guests the royal treatment.

Close to the museums, the Royal Albert Hall and Hyde Park, this intimate hotel (part of the Bespoke Hotels group) occupies one in a row of white-painted Edwardian town houses.