St Pancras Renaissance Hotel
Behold one of London’s architectural masterpieces: This Gothic redbrick palace, a terminal hotel for St Pancras railway station, was built as the Midland Grand Hotel in 1873 for £300 million in today’s money. Palatial public spaces present a gilt-and-tile parade of self-important Victorian excess, from the marble Grand Staircase (seen in the Spice Girls’ video for “Wannabe”) to the lushly carved brasserie and the old wooden Booking Hall, now a classy place to get a drink. Hard to believe that in the 1960s, this glory was nearly torn down. The building was “too good for its purpose,” lamented its architect, Gilbert Scott. It’s worth a wander even if you’re not staying here. As a hotel, service is distracted and rooms need some attention, so we currently recommend it more for tourist visits than for overnight stays. If you do choose it for Marriott points reasons, the best premium rooms have an unforgettable view down the ribbed, cast-iron cavern of the train shed and you can watch Eurostar arrive and depart in your bathrobe. Rooms in the modern Barlow wing are blandly corporate, lack those long views (the ones in lower categories have small windows), and suit business travel tastes—for us, it’s the original building or nothing.
Behold one of London’s architectural masterpieces: This Gothic redbrick palace, a terminal hotel for St Pancras railway station, was built as the Midland Grand Hotel in 1873 for £300 million in today’s money. Palatial public spaces present a gilt-and-tile parade of self-important Victorian excess, from the marble Grand Staircase (seen in the Spice Girls’ video for “Wannabe”) to the lushly carved brasserie and the old wooden Booking Hall, now a classy place to get a drink. Hard to believe that in the 1960s, this glory was nearly torn down. The building was “too good for its purpose,” lamented its architect, Gilbert Scott. It’s worth a wander even if you’re not staying here. As a hotel, service is distracted and rooms need some attention, so we currently recommend it more for tourist visits than for overnight stays. If you do choose it for Marriott points reasons, the best premium rooms have an unforgettable view down the ribbed, cast-iron cavern of the train shed and you can watch Eurostar arrive and depart in your bathrobe. Rooms in the modern Barlow wing are blandly corporate, lack those long views (the ones in lower categories have small windows), and suit business travel tastes—for us, it’s the original building or nothing.
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