Knightsbridge Hotels

Knightsbridge, London - Guide

Knightsbridge - General Information

Knightsbridge is one of London's most exclusive neighbourhoods. Home to a-list Hollywood stars and foreign billionaires, the legendary Harrods department store and international auction houses, Knightsbridge is a playground for celebrities and the well-heeled.

Most celebrated for shopping, given that it’s home to Harrods, Harvey Nichols and a plethora of up-scale boutiques, Knightsbridge is also home to the superb Victoria & Albert Museum and Science Museum, as well as beautiful cobbled mews and leafy Georgian crescents. Flats and townhouses here – particularly those in Belgravia and Brompton, with their distinctive cream stucco façades – are amongst the most expensive private property in London. And though it lies in the heart of the capital, sandwiched between Kensington, Belgravia and Mayfair, it’s also right on the fringes of Hyde Park, which offers peaceful green spaces and the cooling waters of the Serpentine, especially in summer.

Knightsbridge’s current elegance belies its rather seamy origins. Only 150 years ago it was an unruly straggling village with a reputation as the home of thieves, cut throats and highwaymen. In fact, until 1800, Hyde Park Corner was as far west as respectable Londoners cared to travel; brave souls wishing to travel further afield would arrange to meet and travel in convoy to avert the villians laying in wait in the park. Gentrification began in 1820, when Lord Grosvenor directed the architect Thomas Cubitt to develop the area, instructing him to build the very best houses in London. This process was consolidated when Harrods moved there in 1849.

The district of Knightsbridge is so named because there was a bridge there crossing the River Westbourne. This river flows from Hampstead, through Knightsbridge and Hyde Park (where it was dammed to create the Serpentine) then on into the River Thames at Chelsea. Today it is primarily an underground waterway due to extensive building over it.

There are no highwaymen in Knightsbridge these days, though less well-heeled consumers may still regard the prices in some of the shops as daylight robbery. As well as the landmarks of Harrods and Harvey Nichols, you’ll find such iconic names as Chanel, Yves St Laurent and Bulgari. But Knightsbridge offers more than just brand name shopping for the culturally aware tourist. It plays host to two of London’s most admired museums. The grand embassies in Belgravia – especially Arne Jacobson’s Danish Embassy building – are well worth a look from an architectural viewpoint. And St Paul’s Knightsbridge is an appealing Victorian church with scenes from the life of Jesus in ceramics tiling the nave, and a wonderful wood-beamed ceiling. None the less, it’s commerce that Knightbridge is most famous for and it’s hard to imagine another metropolitan area in the world that offers so much superb shopping in so compact an enclave of peace and unostentatious prosperity.