Step out of Russell Square station and the Kimpton Fitzroy doesn’t so much appear as announce itself: a full city block of thé-au-lait terracotta, turrets and swagger, like a French château that took a wrong turn at Calais and decided London would do nicely. This Grade II* listed grand dame has been many things since 1900 — a byword for Victorian excess, a wartime survivor, a conference haunt, a 21st-century reboot — but never, ever shy.
A quick spin through history (hold onto the banister)
The Bloomsbury building began life as the Hotel Russell, conceived by the brilliantly named Charles Fitzroy Doll, a hotel specialist with a flair for drama. Built in the 1890s and opened in 1900, it was part of the Bedford Estate’s plan to turbo-charge Bloomsbury — a neighbourhood better known at the time for books and ideas than for marble and mirrors. The Russell was high-tech for its day, with the modern conveniences that made late-Victorian travellers feel futuristic (ensuite bathrooms were a revelation). And somewhere between the marble staircase and the sunken garden, Londoners decided this was not a mere hotel but an event.
Then there’s the oft-repeated Titanic connection. Doll designed the Titanic’s dining room, reportedly in the image of the Russell’s original restaurant. Look up the stair to “Lucky George”, a bronze dragon whose twin supposedly sailed on that ill-fated liner, and you’ll feel Bloomsbury’s most unlikely brush with maritime myth. Believe it, question it; either way, the story clings like sea mist.
The hotel’s own saga had its knocks. During the Second World War, while many London hotels were requisitioned, the Russell largely sidestepped takeover; it did, however, lose a splendid copper dome to a 1941 air raid — a theatrical hat whipped off in a storm, never reinstated.
Fast-forward to April 2018: the building re-emerged from renovation as The Principal London, and by October of that year it had taken its current name — Kimpton Fitzroy — marking Kimpton’s UK debut. The renaming is a charming wink to its architect, and it signalled a new chapter: service with personality layered onto serious heritage.
The look: flamboyant French Renaissance with London chutzpah
Historic England crisply files the style as “flamboyant French Renaissance,” derived from engravings of the Château de Madrid. Translation: romantic gables, octagonal turrets topped with conical roofs, a parade of coats of arms, and enough ornamental terracotta to make a potter weep with joy. The façades are theatre sets; the Russell Square front is all ceremony, while the side elevations keep the drama simmering rather than boiling over — a touch of Victorian decorum amid the bravado.
Stare a little longer and the eccentricities multiply: fish-scale tiles shimmering green on the roof, modillion cornices stepping out like chorus girls, balconies with terracotta balustrades, and those famous life-size statues of four queens — Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne and Victoria — watching the comings and goings with imperial sangfroid. Around the corner, four busts of prime ministers nod to a different kind of power dressing: Disraeli, Gladstone, Derby and Salisbury. Bloomsbury, meet Westminster.
Inside: marble, mosaics and a dragon called George
The lobby is a study in “more”: columns of coloured marble, flourishes of proto-Art Nouveau plasterwork, light filtering through stained glass, and underfoot an original Zodiac mosaic that makes even the most hurried check-in feel faintly cosmic. Up the grand stair curls the hotel’s resident guardian — “Lucky George” — whose presence is pure Victoriana: part whimsy, part talisman, wholly photogenic. It’s all so richly layered that you half expect a Bloomsbury Group member to lean in and ask for a light.
Of course, this is Bloomsbury, where ideas breed. The Russell Group of universities took its name from meetings held here — proof that even amid marble and mirror, academia will get its branding done. The building didn’t just host history; it helped name it.
The 2018–present refresh: respecting the bones, warming the blood
Kimpton’s takeover didn’t erase the past; it edited it with a sympathetic, contemporary hand. Lead designer Tara Bernerd & Partners kept the architectural gravitas and added texture: softer palettes in the 334 rooms, bespoke patterns by British textile designer Kit Miles, and just enough play to stop it all feeling museum-piece precious. The effect is that rare London trick: a sense of theatre with an unbuttoned collar.
Public spaces now riff on the building’s DNA. Palm Court glows beneath a glass canopy; Fitz’s — an evening bar and adjacent parlour — leans into velvet, mirrorballs and a colour-driven cocktail menu that flirts with synaesthesia. It’s Bloomsbury with a raised eyebrow: literary by day, louche by night, because even scholars need a Negroni.
Why it works (and why it still matters)
The Kimpton Fitzroy’s secret is dual citizenship: proudly of its time and resolutely of ours. Where some heritage hotels feel embalmed, this one breathes. The French-Renaissance silhouette keeps its drama; the interiors loosen their tie. The result is place-making rather than pastiche — a landmark that knows it’s a landmark but refuses to be boring about it.
And it is, quite literally, a landmark: an entire block of the square’s eastern edge, whose presence rebalances the garden’s plane trees and Georgian terraces. The hotel doesn’t just sit in Bloomsbury; it frames it, like a carved proscenium around the everyday theatre of students, tourists and lanyarded conference-goers.
If you’re the sceptical sort (this is Londonopia; of course you are), you might ask: is the Titanic story over-egged? Was Charles Fitzroy Doll really the father of “dolled up”? The first is plausible folklore anchored by period design overlaps; the second is almost certainly apocryphal. But myths attach to buildings that make us feel something, and the Fitzroy’s very job — then and now — is to turn up the feeling.
Hotels often sell you a night. The Kimpton Fitzroy sells you a narrative: of a city flexing at the turn of a century, of a square that learned to strut, of a building that could have fossilised but chose to flirt instead. It’s the kind of address that makes you walk a little slower on the pavement, head tipped up, counting queens and coats of arms, wondering who else has climbed these stairs and whether Lucky George really does bring luck.
If London’s great hotels are a chorus line, the Fitzroy is the one in the front — not because it’s the most polished, but because it knows how to wink. And Bloomsbury, famously suspicious of anything too glossy, seems to wink back.
Key facts at a glance: built in the 1890s; opened 1900; flamboyant French Renaissance by Charles Fitzroy Doll; Grade II* listed; full-block façade on Russell Square; four queens above the entrance; Titanic design lore; reborn as Kimpton Fitzroy in October 2018; 334 rooms; lobby Zodiac mosaic; “Lucky George” on the stair. File under: history with a sense of humour.