Hotels in Bloomsbury

Bookish Bloomsbury covers the space north-west of Tottenham Court Road to Kings Cross, centred around the seat of enlightenment that is the British Museum.

Academic by nature and distinctive in character to decadent Soho and theatrical Covent Garden, it was the stamping ground of the ‘Bloomsbury Group’, a famed collection of early 20th century writers, artists and philosophers including Virginia Woolf who discussed ideas in the elegant townhouses around Russell Square.

It’s also home to many of Londons publishers, and educational institutions like the University of London, the School of Oriental and African Studies, University College London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) are all situated in this leafy quarter.

Russell Square is Bloomsburys green lungs; though surrounded by traffic, it’s a peaceful place with office workers crowded around its fountains during the city’s all-too-rare bouts of sunshine.

Russell Square is served by the Piccadilly Line and the areas abundance of hotels and hostels make it a magnet for foreign tour groups.  As a result, the bars and restaurants around the tube are usually buzzing with excited Europeans of an evening searching for that authentic London pub experience.

If this is your bent, head straight to Lamb’s Conduit Street, a traditional thoroughfare with independent cafes, booksellers and the landmark Lamb pub, an oasis of Victoriana.

Elsewhere, the British Museum (Great Russell Street, 020 7636 1555, www.britishmuseum.org) is deservedly one of the nation’s biggest tourist attractions: a collection of cultural objects mostly gathered throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, nowhere else in the world will you see perfectly-preserved mummies alongside Mayan stone reliefs, the gates to ancient Middle Eastern cities and the amazing Rosetta Stone, the keystone for modern day hieroglyphic translation.

There are over seven million of these treasures and in truth, it takes more than a week to fully explore – thankfully, the muse um is free, so you can pop in and wonder at these monuments of human culture as many times as you like during your stay.

Bloomsbuty hotels are very popular due to offering easy access to many London attractions.  From this area you can easily walk to Covent Garden, Theatreland, Oxford Street, Soho and Trafalgar Square. Bloombury is the location of the St Giles Hotel London.

Bloomsbury is served by several Underground stations, two of these, Russell Square and Euston Square, are located in Bloomsbury itself. The other stations located close to Bloomsbury, are Euston, Goodge Street, Warren Street, Tottenham Court Road, Holborn, Chancery Lane and Kings Cross St Pancras.

The mainline rail stations Euston, Kings Cross and St Pancras are all located just north of Bloomsbury. Eurostar services are from St Pancras.