Why you should experience South Place Hotel in London, England.
South Place Hotel is an art-driven design hotel where the City of London's commercial intensity, contemporary creative culture, architectural precision and restaurant ambition converge within a purpose-built property between Moorgate and Liverpool Street.
Set along South Place near Eldon Street and just steps from Finsbury Circus, the hotel occupies an eight-storey building conceived by Allies and Morrison for developer Frogmore, with a finely perforated aluminium skin that folds upward from façade to roof and opens around the upper terrace. Conran + Partners shaped the interiors around a substantial contemporary-art program, collaborating with London galleries while commissioning bespoke works and lighting specifically for the property, including John Vincent Aranda's Pop Art compositions and a six-storey steel installation by Grace & Webb. The South Place Hotel Art Prize subsequently created a £5,000 annual award for MA students and recent graduates from London art schools, with Royal College of Art graduate Zemer Peled winning the inaugural 2012 edition. The result is a hotel where Allies and Morrison, Conran + Partners, John Vincent Aranda, Grace & Webb and Zemer Peled give the City of London a hospitality address shaped as deliberately by architecture and contemporary art as by commerce.
What you should know about South Place Hotel.
South Place Hotel is best known for opening on September 3, 2012 as the first hotel created by restaurant group D&D London, introducing an 80-bedroom property with two restaurants and three bars under general manager Bruce Robertson and original executive chef Tony Fleming, formerly of One Aldwych. Angler followed on September 17 on the seventh floor and earned its first MICHELIN star in 2013, only a year after opening, establishing the restaurant as the hotel's principal gastronomic institution. Gary Foulkes assumed leadership of Angler in 2016 after a career encompassing Gary Rhodes, John Campbell at The Vineyard, William Drabble at Aubergine and Phil Howard at The Square, retaining the MICHELIN star throughout his tenure. Craig Johnston subsequently took command of the kitchen after becoming the youngest winner of MasterChef: The Professionals in 2017, experience at Pollen Street Social and progression to head chef under Marcus Wareing at Marcus Belgravia. Johnston won the Roux Scholarship in April 2025, becoming the first chef to win both competitions, and Angler retained its MICHELIN star for a thirteenth consecutive year in the 2026 Guide.
Craig Johnston now develops Angler around British seafood and seasonality, translating the discipline acquired under Marcus Wareing into dishes centered on precisely handled fish, shellfish and produce sourced from across the British Isles. The Roux Scholarship placed Johnston before a judging structure involving Michel Roux, Alain Roux and honorary president Elena Arzak in 2025, when six finalists were challenged to interpret Wyndford wagyu shank with bone marrow, borlotti beans and Basque-style stuffed potatoes before Johnston secured the title and a career-development award worth up to £12,000. Angler's current MICHELIN recognition places Johnston's cooking within a restaurant lineage beginning with Tony Fleming in 2012 and continuing through Gary Foulkes, while the seventh-floor dining room remains distinguished by its mirrored ceiling and rooftop terrace. Together, Craig Johnston, Marcus Wareing, Michel Roux, Alain Roux and Elena Arzak extend South Place Hotel's original restaurant-led concept into a contemporary culinary character carrying one of the City's longest-running MICHELIN distinctions.
How to fold South Place Hotel into your trip.
South Place Hotel works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing Roman London, contemporary performance and the City's centuries-old relationship with commerce.
Begin at London Mithraeum, where the remains of a Roman temple dedicated to Mithras were discovered during postwar excavation in 1954 on the banks of the ancient Walbrook, producing one of twentieth-century London's major archaeological discoveries alongside thousands of Roman objects subsequently recovered from the Bloomberg site. Continue to Barbican Centre, where Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's vast Brutalist complex opened in 1982 as an arts institution encompassing concert halls, theaters, cinemas, galleries and the home of the London Symphony Orchestra. Conclude at Guildhall Art Gallery, where the City of London's collection occupies a building opened in 1999 above the remains of London's Roman amphitheater, discovered in 1988 during construction and now preserved beneath the gallery. The progression moves from the cult world of Roman Londinium through Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's twentieth-century arts complex into a civic collection physically layered above a Roman arena, revealing the archaeology, creative culture and institutional history surrounding South Place Hotel.
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