Hotel Orfila by Jamie Dunford Wood

Small palace/town house tastefully converted into a small 'boutique' hotel in the 1990s. It has basic amenities and a small staff, but the small reception area is stuffed with real antiques, chipped by age, with paint-effect marblised walls and colourful flower arrangements. At the rear there is a small restaurant giving onto a smaller walled in garden. There are just 33 rooms and suites, some facing the garden with traditional Spanish square bay windows, so with the drapes drawn back they are bright.

The decor throughout the hotel is in two styles, and there is a difference of size between grades. The whole place feels clean and efficient and above all quiet. Striped pale yellow walls in the corridors match yellow carpeting, dirty in places but lived in and engendering a sense of total comfort. The standard and superior rooms are subdued, in shades of yellow or sage green colourways, with the woodwork picked out in darker tones, alongside soft red/pink or green fabrics, fabric bedheads, ceiling to floor curtains, good repro antiques, little wall lights and, in the small bathrooms, twin sinks. The pink/pale yellow combination is brightest and works best. The effect is fairly neutral and discreet, but without veering to the corporate. The 8 superior rooms have little seating areas while 4 of the 5 suites are more elegant with empire furnishings, real antiques and rich, swagged curtains over tall, double door windows.

The garret suite is less elegant. The top, 5th floor rooms have sloped ceilings in the eaves. The quiet leafy streets of this embassy district are like a morgue in mid-afternoon.