Conceived more as a drawing room than a hotel lobby, the reception area sets the tone for what is ahead. Period touches such as plaster crown mouldings, Persian carpets, and gilt mirrors are complemented by antique and bespoke furnishings, including a sumptuous settee flanked by dark boiserie. The décor evokes the upper-class ambience of a traditional English home which Casiraghi playfully subverts by painting the walls a vivid orange hue and inserting a minimalist metallic reception desk.

Meanwhile, in the adjacent dining room, khaki banquettes, mahogany tables, and shell-shaped sconces are juxtaposed with modernist touches such as olive-hued wall panels and cubic ceiling lights. This interplay of period and contemporary elements ensures these spaces strike a fine balance between nostalgia and modernity, an equilibrium that extends throughout the hotel.

In the hotel’s guest rooms, vintage-style furnishings in dark wood are juxtaposed against olive-green, deep orange or cerulean blue carpets and matching curtains. An even bolder version of these colours prevails in the bathrooms injecting a modern energy while Gothic-style cornices adorning the rooms add a romantic flourish. This oscillation between restraint and exuberance is echoed throughout the hotel’s varied accommodations which range from the snug, nautically inspired Cabin Rooms—reminiscent of a well-appointed ship’s quarters—to the expansive Grand Norfolk Suite, where soaring ceilings and French windows overlooking the verdant Norfolk Square evoke the grandeur of a bygone era, albeit invigorated with Casiraghi’s contemporary finesse. At every scale, the interiors feel deeply personal, successfully imbued with the habits and eccentricities of their imagined owners.

Casiraghi’s eccentric aesthetic culminates in the ground floor Pondicherry Bar. Swathed in the hotel’s signature orange hue, the space is animated by a series of tapestries by American fashion designer Emily Bode that wrap around the room. Hand-embroidered in dark blue linen, the panels are inspired by Britain’s colonial connections to India, teeming with elephants, tigers, and traditionally dressed figures—motifs that, rather than feeling derivative, infuse the space with a layered, almost dreamlike quality.

The collaboration between Grand Hotel Bellevue and Emily Bode extends to a gift station with an assortment of baseball caps, notebooks and other accessories. Given carte blanche under a colonial-inspired brief, Bode—whose sensibilities are keenly attuned to themes of heritage and nostalgia—has distilled a sense of exoticism into an exuberant collection characterised by vibrant hues and playful details. In a hotel where every object and surface tells a story, this retail concept becomes an extension of the overarching narrative, an opportunity for guests to take a piece of the Grand Hotel Bellevue’s imagined world with them.