Why you should experience The Caesar Hotel in London, England.
The Caesar Hotel is an artful Victorian hotel where Bayswater's garden-square elegance, nineteenth-century residential ambition, continental sensibility and collecting culture converge across a sequence of historic townhouses on Queen's Gardens.
Set along Queen's Gardens near Leinster Gardens and just steps from Kensington Gardens, the hotel occupies a group of connected Victorian buildings within a residential composition developed during Bayswater's rapid westward expansion in the mid-nineteenth century. Queen's Gardens emerged around 1855 as part of the speculative development associated with William Frederick Cleveland, whose extensive building activity helped establish the terraces and garden squares that reshaped Paddington and Bayswater. The surrounding architecture retains the characteristic stucco, London stock brick, projecting porches, balconies and tall residential proportions associated with the planned Queen's Gardens ensemble. The result is a hotel where William Frederick Cleveland's garden-square urbanism and a connected sequence of Victorian residences preserve the architectural character of nineteenth-century Bayswater within contemporary hospitality.
What you should know about The Caesar Hotel.
The Caesar Hotel is best known for joining Derby Hotels Collection in 2004 after Jordi Clos and property group Metropolis acquired the London property for £30 million, establishing the collection's principal British address within a company whose first Hotel Derby opened in Barcelona in 1968. Derby subsequently acquired Metropolis's remaining half of The Caesar in 2013, consolidating ownership under the Clos family group, while a £20 million comprehensive redevelopment announced in 2025 began repositioning the property toward the luxury segment. The hotel currently comprises 120 rooms, and a two-year renovation has introduced a renewed accommodation program while preserving the Victoria character of the interconnected buildings. VisitEngland has awarded The Caesar four-star status and its Silver Award, adding national hospitality recognition to a property that remains Derby Hotels Collection's London flagship.
Jordi Clos gives The Caesar its most distinctive intellectual character through an art collection centered on Roman mosaics dating from the second through sixth centuries AD, with many originating in the Roman province of Syria and the workshops of Antioch. Catalan artist Francesc Guitart extends that program through original works, collages and lithographs created specifically for The Caesar, connecting ancient Mediterranean material with a contemporary Catalan artistic voice. Fundació Arqueològica Clos provides the broader cultural foundation for Jordi Clos's collecting practice through the Museu Egipci de Barcelona, while Derby Hotels Collection now holds more than 5,000 ancient and contemporary works across the portfolio shaped by his patronage. Together, Jordi Clos, Francesc Guitart, Fundació Arqueològica Clos and the Antioch mosaics give The Caesar Hotel an unusually coherent artistic character in which archaeology, collecting and contemporary creation form part of the property's authorship.
How to fold The Caesar Hotel into your trip.
The Caesar Hotel works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing Victorian engineering, scientific curiosity and domestic design through Bayswater and neighboring Kensington.
Begin at Brunel Museum, where the Thames Tunnel created by Marc Isambard Brunel and Isambard Kingdom Brunel opened in 1843 after one of the nineteenth century's most audacious engineering campaigns, preserving the story of the world's first tunnel constructed beneath a navigable river. Continue to The Design Museum, founded by Sir Terence Conran in 1989 and relocated in 2016 into the former Commonwealth Institute, where John Pawson reworked the celebrated hyperbolic-paraboloid structure for collections and exhibitions spanning industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. Conclude at Leighton House, where Frederic Leighton commissioned George Aitchison to develop his studio residence through successive phases beginning in the 1860s, culminating in the Arab Hall and its exceptional assemblage of Middle Eastern tiles, mosaics and decorative arts. The progression moves from the Brunels' engineering imagination through Conran and Pawson's design institution into Leighton and Aitchison's intensely authored artistic residence, revealing the traditions of invention, collecting and design surrounding The Caesar Hotel.
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