The marble staircase is the part of Whiteleys everyone remembers, and it had to be taken apart to be kept. Foster + Partners had it deconstructed, lengthened by four steps and rebuilt by hand in Devon, and it now climbs three floors to the glass dome, with a green and white chequerboard of marble twisting around its foot in a radial pattern. The store it belongs to opened on 2 November 1911, designed by John Belcher and John James Joass, and was claimed at the time to be the largest shop in the world.
Its founder never saw it. William Whiteley called himself the Universal Provider, claimed he could supply anything from a pin to an elephant, and once procured a pint of fleas. He had built one of London's first department stores out of a drapery on Westbourne Grove, and in January 1907 he was shot dead in the shop by a young man claiming to be his illegitimate son. After his death the business moved to Queensway.
Shaw sent Eliza Doolittle to Whiteleys to be dressed in Pygmalion, and Gordon Selfridge bought the business in 1927. The department store closed in 1981, came back as a shopping centre in 1989 and shut again in 2018. Foster + Partners have since turned the listed building into The Whiteley, a mix of homes, shops and restaurants, with the hotel taking a full quarter of it.
Six Senses opened here on 1 March 2026, the group's first hotel in Britain and its latest city address after Rome and Kyoto. Hyde Park, in the group's phrase, is a stone's throw away.
A department store, kept
AvroKO did the interiors with EPR Architects, borrowing the display techniques of the old store to steer guests towards wellness rather than shopping. The glass vitrines and timber cabinetry of a Victorian emporium remain, now holding botanical specimens and kombucha dispensers, and porcelain petals by the artist Ula Saniawa hang over the pond at reception.
The rooms run to inky blues and warm woods and Art Deco curves, with Crittall-style glass showers modelled on the bathrooms of the Maison de Verre in Paris. Many have private terraces, and the Whiteley Suite at the top has a roof terrace of its own.
The spa is the draw, the bar is the surprise
The spa is the centre of gravity. The pool sits beneath plaster vaults inspired by European metro platforms, and the hotel says it is London's first hotel magnesium pool. Around it are a traditional hammam, a recovery lounge and HUM2N, a longevity clinic founded by Dr Mohammed Enayat. It is a great deal of wellness, and the building is the better story.
The Alchemy Bar is the most unusual room in the hotel: a working apothecary, oak cabinetry crowded with tincture bottles and dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, led by the head alchemist Charlotte Pulver. Guests can turn locally foraged herbs into their own tinctures and tonics, which reappear in treatments, in the hammam and at the bars. The signature Clouds Over Islay pairs Bruichladdich whisky with amazake and lemon hydrosol.
“Bayswater has waited a long time for a reason to be visited rather than passed through.”
Whiteley's Kitchen, Bar and Café is run by the executive chef Eliano Crespi and the head chef Jose Jara, cooking vegetable-forward British food with fire and old preserving techniques. The room is dressed as a Victorian manor-house kitchen, with classic French hoods and green enamel fixtures. Above the lobby is Six Senses Place, the brand's first members' club, whose Dome Bar sits beneath the oculus.
What Bayswater gets
The Whiteley is still filling out around the hotel, with homes, shops and restaurants in the rest of the building. Kensington Gardens is a short walk south down Queensway.
