Guests with a deep sense of rock ‘n’ roll history and even deeper pockets are invited to channel their inner rock god at Chateau Denmark, London’s latest music-inspired boutique hotel, which opens in April 2021 with luxury apartments and curious ‘maxi-bars’. Steve Pafford has had a bit of a preview.
Soho’s rock ‘n’ roll heritage will be brought to life at the Eurocentric sounding Chateau Denmark, a high-end hotel slated to open in Central London soon.
Chateau Denmark will comprise 55 top-level suites and apartments “set across 16 characterful buildings in and around Denmark Street”, the UK’s most music-minded street, Denmark Street. One of few West End thoroughfares to have retained its original 17th-century façades on both sides, many of the buildings will be restored and renovated to their former glory.
Of course, Denmark Street — or the famed Tin Pan Alley as it was colloquially known — was once the thriving hub of the capital’s music industry and an emblem of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, playing host to everyone from Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan… not to mention the launch party for Q Dylan at what was then the much missed Helter Skelter bookstore.
Running from the bustling Charing Cross Road to St. Giles High Street, several of the CD apartments are housed in the historic building where the Rolling Stones recorded their first album. Where David Bowie signed his first contract. Where Elton John worked at a music publishing company and wrote Your Song. And where Malcolm McLaren rented outbuildings for his new charges the Sex Pistols, doubling up as the pioneering punk quartet’s rehearsal and living space in the mid 1970s, and where many of their early demos were recorded in a spunky basement set up.
Midge Ure’s Rich Kids moved in after the Pistols, followed by Bananarama. Now that’s really saying something.

The whole Chateau Denmark development sports design by London-based Taylor Howes, imagining a time where “punk rock and vintage gothic meet modern psychedelia with a timeless grandeur”, says the corporate press release. The mixed media apartment “unhotel” is an extravagant elegy to those guitar-smashing, TV-throwing days, born out of a collaboration between Outernet Global and “hospitality personality” Carrie Wicks’ CAW Ventures.
Accommodation options include Session Rooms (starting at a bank-busting £510), which are tiered in Superior, Luxury and Deluxe categories. These are accessed at the rear of the site, which links up to the area’s swanky new hi-tech hub, the Now Building (with its immersive media displays claimed to be the largest 360 degree 8k video screens anywhere in the world). Gorgeous guests can expect “gold-trimmed, graffitied signature beds to full-blown psychedelia with bold colours and tactile rounded furnishings”, with Deluxe rooms also featuring a ‘kitchenette maxi-bar.”
Meanwhile, for those who are a bit more Siouxsie Sioux at heart than Suzi Quatro, there are the Flitcroft Apartments, done up in a lavishly gothic aesthetic – and including hand-carved four-poster beds, stone fireplaces, and views to the 18th Century St Giles in the Fields Church. Nightly prices start at a trifling £660.

The apartments are housed within a mixture of Grade II listed townhouses, a mews house and mansion buildings up and down Denmark Street. These start from 35 sqm, with design features including “illustrative and evocative wallpaper with original timber beams”, dark panelling, and bordello red walls.
Nicely strutted with peacock blue sofas, sculpted fireplaces sit opposite imposing roll-top red-lined bathtubs, full size maxi-bars and “concealed doorways leading to powder rooms along with paisley patterned and orange velvet headboards”. Phew.
Signature apartments include the 51 sqm I Am Anarchy – a cheekily named duplex mews house behind 6 Denmark Street, and featuring “Johnny Rotten’s storied caricatures of his fellow bandmates, the Sex Pistols” (ie walled graffiti the original foursome left behind), along with “gloss black furniture, tartan blinds and statement graffitied chairs”.
See, you don’t get that at Premier Inn.
Punk has become a heritage.

The mixed-use takeover looks set to continue the upscale trend for hybrid home-hotels, where discerning travellers are offered the perks of serviced apartment living with the comfort of a hotel set-up. It also comes at a time when Universal Music Group has announced a new chain of music-themed hotels called UMUSIC, suggesting a vogue for related entertainment-based accommodation is The New Big Thing.
Chateau Denmark is set to open its doors on April 4, and additional venues will open later in 2022, including a lounge bar and basement club, fitness centre, a recording studio, and live events spaces ranging in capacity from 360 to 2,000 guests, to replace the demolished-for-Crossrail Astoria Theatre
chateaudenmark.com
Steve Pafford