If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (GBP226.40), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Set on Seymour Street, the Zetter Marylebone greets guests with an instantly homey lounge, inspired by the home of fictitious eccentric ‘wicked’ Uncle Seymour, where chocolate-brown leather seats, wine-hued oriental rugs and antique handicrafts are inspired by the collection in Sir John Sloane’s Museum. Bedrooms, too, are richly coloured, and the cocktails and afternoon tea served in Seymour’s Parlour are as sumptuous and imaginative as the decor.
11am. Earliest check-in, 3pm; both are flexible, subject to availability.
Prices
Double rooms from £226.40, including tax at 20 per cent.
More details
Rates generally exclude Continental breakfast, which is £15.50.
Also
Unfortunately there's limited access here for those with reduced mobility.
At the hotel
Lounge, umbrellas to borrow and free WiFi. In rooms: flatscreen TV, Marshall or Sonos speakers, tea- and coffee-making kit, minibar with pre-made cocktails, free bottled water, and the White Company bath products.
Our favourite rooms
One of the Deluxe Doubles overlooks a quiet mews street and has a palatial carved wooden bed and seriously high ceilings. On the top floor, Lear’s Loft comes complete with a private terrace and alfresco claw-footed bath tub that the exhibitionist in us adores – wicked Uncle Seymour’s influence, perhaps…
Packing tips
Deeply coloured and understatedly elegant pieces to wear and something by Oscar Wilde or DH Lawrence to read.
Also
The orderly architectural collection of friezes, busts and other Grand Tour trinkets are an homage to Sir John Soane’s Museum off Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Keep an eye open for nods to Uncle Seymour’s pet parrot in the decor, too.
Children
The hotel happily accepts children of all ages. Cots (free; suitable for under-twos) can be added to most rooms; the Junior Suite and Lear’s Loft also have a sofa-bed.
Overview
Although it’s more of an adult-geared stay, the hotel happily accepts children from the age of one to 12. There’s a special kids’ check-in with in-room balloons, pint-sized robes and books. Travel cots and cribs can be provided for the four years and younger set, and some of the rooms have sofa beds. The hotel also has baby listening monitors to borrow, should you want to nip downstairs for a bite to eat while your tiny Smith is sleeping. Although there’s no dedicated menu, ask nicely and the kitchen can whip up most small-palate favourites.
Sustainability efforts
In-room detection and double-glazed windows conserve electricity, an Eau de Vie filtration system cuts out bottled-water waste and everything that can be is recycled. The hotel aims to stick with locally sourced, organic and seasonal food, too.
Grab a table for two by the window to watch the passers-by, snag a by-the-fireplace sofa to really settle in, or make your way to an alcove seat for a side-by-side tête-à-tête.
Dress Code
Casual by day – think jeans, draped shawl cardigans and well-heeled boots – and jazzier by night. Take inspiration from the suspender-clad barmen and go all-out vintage, perhaps,or stick to simple designer sleek.
Hotel restaurant
Cockle-warming in the day and swinging in the evening, Seymour’s Parlour is a place in which you could spend some serious time. It's more a cocktail lounge than a restaurant, and the food is designed to go with the drinks; you’ll find mostly light bites, snacks and sharing platters on the ever-changing menu. Seymour's Parlour aims to be a locavore where possible, and the menu changes seasonally. And, be sure to take part in the most English of traditions, afternoon tea. Choose between Aunt Wilhelmina's tea with a selection of traditional finger sandwiches, and Uncle Seymour's with more substantial snacks like pea croquettes and truffled sausage rolls; both come with scones, jam and clotted cream, and a variety of cakes. Breakfast is also served there; try the lightly spicy potted eggs Benedict, or the indulgent maple-syrup--topped French toast. The coffee is sweet and smooth and not to be missed.
Hotel bar
There’s no delineation between bar and restaurant; Seymour’s Parlour is all one inviting cocktail lounge. But the bespoke ‘Z to A’ cocktail menu is certainly something of its own. Curated with 12 drinks, each handmade libation offers a spin on a classic, made with ingredients known for their neurological and sensory benefits. No 12 is an artichoke-infused twist on a bellini and No 6 freshens up the age-old cosmo with lime-infused tequila and cranberry cordial. Not one of those crowded standing-room joints, the cocktail lounge is table-service only and in high demand, with tables available in 90-minute slots.
Last orders
Breakfast is served daily from 8am to 10.30am. Closed on Sunday and Monday, Seymour’s Parlour starts dishing up at 4pm and pours its final drinks at 11pm (midnight on Friday and Saturday). Afternoon tea is also available Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 4pm.
Room service
The menu from Seymour’s Parlour is available to order to your room until 9.45pm.
The Zetter Marylebone is on a quiet lane, but only two streets from buzzing Oxford Street.
Planes
Heathrow Airport is 40 minutes’ drive from the hotel and Gatwick Airport is 90 minutes’ drive away; times can vary depending on London traffic. The hotel can arrange airport transfers, but they must be booked in advance.
Trains
The hotel can also arrange transfers, which usually take around 10 minutes from Paddington station, trains arrive there from Cardiff, Reading, Bristol, Bath, Oxford, Exeter and Heathrow Airport. Marble Arch and Bond Street tube stations are each about a five-minute walk.
Automobiles
Driving in London is maddening, slow and will incur a Congestion-Zone fee, and the hotel has no parking facilities. We wouldn’t recommend driving yourself, especially when taxis are so abundant.
Worth getting out of bed for
The hotel's Marylebone locale is wonderfully central and somehow still amazingly peaceful. Oxford Street is only two lanes away and Selfridges' flagship shop is practically on your doorstep; luckily there’s ample wardrobe space in the townhouse’s rooms. Walk a few minutes west and you’ll bump into sprawling Hyde Park. From there, it’s a pleasant stroll to wave to the King at Buckingham Palace. The super-central location and excellent transport links mean that all of London is easily accessible, so whether you’re after green space and views from Primrose Hill, tales of Elizabethan history at the Tower of London, or graffiti and trendy baked goods in the East End, nothings more than a half-hour journey from your inviting bed.
Local restaurants
To brunch like West London champions, make your way to the Montagu Kitchen on Sundays. The eggs are served with lobster hollandaise and smoked salmon, and Belgian waffles are topped with hand-whipped cream. For modern European food and wine pairings, head to 28º–50º Wine Workshop & Kitchen on Maddox Street, which also hosts wine-tasting events. The staff at 35 New Cavendish Street, a 10-minute walk away from the hotel, are unflaggingly pleasant; and the brasserie-style menu is extremely tempting. Arrive hungry: fat prawns, still tangy with sea salt, croque monsieur with a scandalous helping of gruyère, and a surprisingly elegant hundred-layer lasagna await.
Local cafés
At La Fromagerie they’re serious about their coffee: they serve Italian Le Piantagioni and the sweeter French Belleville Brûlerie. If tea’s more your speed, try the brews originating from Milly-la-Florêt or Robert Wilson's Sri Lankan estates. Workshop Coffee's Bond Street outpost has green-marble countertops and a rotating signature drink. And Fischer’s Viennese café is good for a leisurely kaffee-und-kuchen break.
Local bars
We’re a little bit enamoured with Pollen Street Social’s cocktail menu, created by Jason Atherton, the man behind Berners Tavern. Test your shaking-and-making skills with a molecular mixology masterclass at Purl, or simply settle into its speakeasy-styled lounge and sample all the artistic apéritifs you can handle. You’ll need the password to gain entry. For those who like their liquor undiluted, Cadenhead’s Whisky Shop holds guided tasting events.
Someone with a great pair of shoes once said, ‘there’s no place like home’. She was right, of course, but if I may, I’d like to add: ‘…when coming home involves a really stand-out hotel’. I say that with conviction, because a recent return home to London involved a two-night stay at the Zetter Townhouse, Marylebone, and to say the homecoming was sweet would be leading you down the wrong path. It was, in fact, the most heavenly reminder of what makes London, and this little corner of it, well, magical.
To give a little background, the big trip back to the city I spent the first 34 years of my life in was a long time coming – four years in fact. Ever since moving to Italy a couple of months pre-pandemic to do my own thing, early attempts to return had been thwarted by some restriction or another and it turns out when you live in Italy people are really happy to come and visit you.
But the absence had gone on for long enough and this Londoner was beginning to feel pangs of nostalgia for a night out in Soho, a Friday morning on Golborne Road and really good bacon butty from an old-school greasy spoon (all pretty basic, I know, but true). So when an invitation to a very special party came our way I RSVP’d a hard yes before even checking if I could swing the time off work.
Luckily I could (my boss was actually very encouraging) and so a couple of weeks later Mr Smith and I found ourselves walking under the garland-arched doorway of the Zetter, out of the drizzly autumn air into the warmest of welcomes. Part country manor, part cosy London pub, there was an immediate sense of home – or at least somewhere you would like to call home. It was too tempting not to have a celebratory glass of bubbles, and so we slinked into a candlelit corner and toasted our arrival, taking in the paintings and plates that filled the Chianti-coloured walls.
Once checked in, we headed up to our third-floor room, overlooking the mewses of Marylebone and out onto nearby Edgware Road. The higgledy-piggledy rooftops of historic cities is a particularly favourite view of mine; bar the odd solar panel these days, I think they make a timeless postcard of a place, a glimpse of what writers and artists would have looked out onto, high up in their top-floor garrets (or more luxurious crashpads just like this one).
My own musing aside, it’s unlikely any of the literary greats had lodgings quite as swanky as our own. As Mr Smith tried out the Hypnos bed (marketed as the best in the world – a claim it’s pretty hard to argue with) I clocked the Verden toiletries in the bathroom (divine), which was decked out in classic white tiles and chrome radiators. I make a point of immediately unpacking wherever I stay – even if just for a night – so that I feel grounded in a place; and so, with our party glad-rags hung up and undies tucked in drawers, we headed out for a bite.
The Zetter doesn’t have a restaurant, but why would you when you’re surrounded by eateries offering the best cuisines from all over the world? With Lebanese, Pakistani and Iranian joints in abundance on the adjacent Edgware Road, Chinese and Indian on New Quebec Street right alongside, and the legendary Italian Locanda Locatelli 10 doors down, you’re spoilt for choice when it comes to dining out.
We opted for a non-Italian option (no shade, Locatelli); having heard good things, Mr Smith suggested we try yet another cuisine – Mexican – at KOL Mezcaleria, which we could see from our window. We sat downstairs in the more informal bar area knocking back spicy mezcal margaritas like two people who hadn’t woken up at 5am that day and only ate a brioche in the airport before departure. So we demolished tacos, ceviche and guacamole so good that I don’t think I can ever eat it anywhere else, ever.
Grateful for the restaurant’s proximity to the Zetter, we hopped over puddles and back to bed, and got a responsible early night, sleeping like babies (very well, that is) which seemed somewhat miraculous given the stay’s central location. I’d like to offer my apologies to the delicious buffet-style Continental breakfast of yoghurts, fresh fruits and pastries on offer, served down in the bar the following morning, as I scarfed more than my fair share of hot bread and salty butter down (feeling grateful that those margs had had huge ice cubes in them) and all the sweet tea.
I felt like a new woman, so we wrapped up warm and headed out. Mr Smith had suggested we get a rental car to nip around old haunts, but I really wanted to be on foot, with jaunts in taxis and the Tube, just to soak up the city. When we lived in London, we both had nine-to-five jobs, and so wandering around in the middle of the day felt like we were either skiving or needed to pretend to be sick in case we bumped into a higher-up.
But we had the place to ourselves: Battersea Power Station, followed by lunch nearby with beloved best friends, a saunter down the river to Gabriel’s Wharf and a slow cinematic walk across Waterloo Bridge (a stroll that never gets old for me). We found our way back to the Zetter via Selfridges (for a sniff around its Food Hall – the best in my opinion) and Marks & Spencer (for a cashmere sweater and some Percy Pigs – unbeatable) both a stone’s throw away from the hotel.
By this time we had to get ready for the big party, Mr Smith in knitwear and dark denim, me in low-key sparkle. As the Zetter arranged a taxi and kindly handed us umbrellas, heading out rarely felt so special. We danced, we bumped into old friends, and made new ones (aren’t those the best parties of all?) before eschewing a cab for a meander through Covent Garden and Mayfair back to Marylebone. Blissed out, we grabbed a nightcap downstairs in our now new favourite bar (the details of which I’d already sent to my mother, aunts, girlfriends, and old colleagues who are always on the lookout for a sweet meeting spot that’s super central and not swamped). Since we had an 8am flight (we didn’t really clock that when booking) we packed, slipped into PJs, and enjoyed one more dreamy night in the softest of sheets, looking out onto London sparkling in the silent rain.
A home from home is a rare thing to come by, especially in this case, when our homecoming expectations could have made our stay anticlimactic. Brilliantly, it was anything but, thanks to the Zetter – and now I know which stay I’ll have in mind when I next click my heels.
