London - Mayfair and Regent Street Travel Guides | London | Sub Regions | London - Mayfair and Regent Street

Mayfair is the West End at its most swanky. Protected from the chaos of Soho to the east by the grand swathe of Regent Street, it still earns its place as the last and most expensive stop on the Monopoly board by boasting the capital’s most luxurious hotels, the hautest couture and cuisine, and some of its wealthiest residents. Unbelievably, people of more modest means do still live here, although the daytime and early evening population consists largely of office workers and tourists.

Lavish and louche, Mayfair smells of money and the area’s traditional exclusivity has ensured that there’s little of the usual ‘see and do’ variety. But digging a bit deeper behind those imposing façades is likely to unearth some stylish and affordable surprises. Window-shopping in the Arcades and New Bond Street, inspecting the objets d’art up for auction at Sotheby’s, getting measured for a suit in Savile Row, wondering at contemporary artwork in Cork Street, sipping lime cordials in luxury hotel bars, listening for nightingales in Berkeley Square, or just taking a quiet stroll around the Duke of Westminster’s several hundred acre estate (he still owns much of the area, including the land beneath the American Embassy): all these cost next to nothing.

Sights

M Green Park or Piccadilly Circus.

Synonymous with high-quality bespoke tailoring since the middle of the 19th century, Savile Row still just about sustains old- fashioned standards of style and service. Some of the shops are museum pieces of interior design in themselves. Others are at the cutting edge of fashion, whose customers are more likely to be seen stepping out to one of the prestigious fine art dealers on Cork Street round the corner. Most dealers welcome visitors through their doors during the week, and Thursday often finds the street packed with an arty crowd attending private views.

M Green Park or Piccadilly Circus.

A gleaming, well-polished way to reach Piccadilly alongside the Royal Academy, Burlington Arcade is the grandest of the area’s unique arcades. Forerunners of the shopping mall, this one maintains its antique tone by imposing a ban on running, singing or whistling. Take care, because whistling could be the appropriate reaction to some of the price tags in the windows. New Bond Street continues the theme, home to the all the big names of high fashion, as well as more staid establishments like the auctioneers Sotheby’s ( T 020-7293 5000) who have been bringing their gavel down on rare and expensive objets d’art since 1744. Call in advance for a catalogue to find out what’s going... going... when, before it’s gone. The entrance is guarded by a 3600-year-old Egyptian carving of Sekhmet and there’s an excellent tearoom.

Albermarle St, T 020-7409 2992, http://www.ri.ac.uk. Mon-Fri 1000-1700. £1. M Green Park.

Housed in the basement of the grand neoclassical home of the Royal Institution, which was established at the end of the 18th century ‘to facilitate…the application of science to the common purposes of life’, this old-fashioned little museum celebrates the achievements of the pioneer of electricity, Michael Faraday. It includes an evocative reconstruction of his laboratory, a large electromagnet and a strange hand-operated vacuum pump.

23-25 Brook St, T 020-7495 1685, http://www.handelhouse.org. Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat 1000-1800, Thu 1000-2000, Sun 1200-1800 (last admission 30 mins before closing). £5, concessions £4. M Bond St

This is a reconstructed Georgian house in the building occupied by Handel in the 18th century and Hendrix in the 20th. There’s not much about the latter, whose house (no 23) is now a temporary exhibition space. The former gets the star treatment in an attempt to conjure the atmosphere of his times, although there’s little here that’s genuinely connected with the great composer.

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