Bulgari Hotel London: A Complete Review of the Most Anticipated Opening of the Decade

The original Bulgari Hotel London, which opened in 2012 in a purpose-built building on Knightsbridge's most prestigious residential street, was from the outset one of the most talked-about hotel openings of its decade. Antonio Citterio's architecture — warm Roman travertine, dark wood, polished brass, a visual language drawn directly from Bulgari's jewellery design vocabulary — created interiors of remarkable coherence and sophistication. The 85 rooms and suites were the most generously proportioned in the neighbourhood; the spa, at 3,000 square metres, was the largest in central London; and the combination of discreet location, exceptional service, and the Bulgari brand's specific associations with Italian style and jewellery connoisseurship attracted a clientele — Middle Eastern royalty, fashion world principals, corporate principals requiring the absolute maximum in privacy — that made it one of London's most exclusive hotel addresses within its first season.

The £300 million renovation completed in 2024 has refreshed rather than reinvented. Citterio's architectural language remains the framework; what has changed is the depth of the specification and the quality of the technical infrastructure. The rooms have been enlarged through the merger of some previously smaller categories; the bathrooms — always a Bulgari signature — have been upgraded to a specification that deploys Waterworks fixtures, bespoke Italian marble sourced from the same quarries that supply Bulgari's Roman atelier, and shower systems calibrated to the exact water pressure and temperature preferences stored in the guest's profile. The lighting, redesigned with Lutron Homeworks throughout, allows each space to transition between ambient, task, and atmospheric settings through a bedside panel that has been designed with the same attention to tactile quality as the hotel's hardware throughout.

The food and beverage programme has undergone its most significant evolution. The arrival of a culinary director with a background in the kitchens of three-Michelin-starred restaurants in Milan and London has transformed the Il Bar and Il Ristorante menus from competent luxury hotel cooking to something genuinely worth visiting for its own sake. The pasta programme — house-made daily, with a commitment to regional Italian recipes that extends to sourcing 00 flour from a specific Umbrian mill and buffalo mozzarella from a producer in Campania with whom the hotel has an exclusive supply arrangement — is now, by fair assessment, among the three or four best Italian pasta programmes in London. The wine list, revised under the direction of a sommelier previously at Locanda Locatelli, is outstanding: deep in Barolo and Barbaresco, exceptionally well-chosen in Burgundy, and offering by-the-glass selections that treat the solo diner at the bar with the same seriousness as a table ordering a £500 bottle.

The spa, while not the largest in London any longer (the opening of the Four Seasons Park Lane spa and the Raffles London at The OWO spa have added significant competition), remains among the finest. The Bulgari Spa's signature treatment — the Siero d'Oro facial, developed in collaboration with Bulgari's perfumery team and incorporating the olfactory signature of the brand's BV Notte fragrance — is a genuinely memorable experience: 90 minutes of facial and decolleté treatment in a marble-lined suite with a heated treatment bed and a menu of additional services that allows the guest to extend the session to a full half-day programme. The gym, equipped with a curated selection of Technogym and Life Fitness equipment alongside a dedicated Pilates studio and a recovery suite with cryotherapy and compression therapy, operates to the standard that the clientele requires.