Kimpton Charlotte Square Hotel

Georgian Grandeur, Loosened Up

Charlotte Square is one of Edinburgh’s great architectural set pieces. Designed as part of the city’s New Town, its stately Georgian façades embody order, symmetry and restraint. Kimpton Charlotte Square occupies seven interconnected townhouses along this historic square — but once inside, the mood becomes considerably less serious. Rather than turning the buildings into a museum of Georgian elegance, the designers introduced personality, humour and layers of imagined history. The premise is simple but effective: what if these townhouses belonged to an eccentric Scottish gentleman who had spent a lifetime travelling, collecting and returning home with stories? That fictional host becomes the invisible thread running through the hotel.

A House Filled with Stories

The interiors feel collected rather than decorated. Vintage trunks, walking sticks, globes, framed maps, patterned wallpapers, books and curious objects appear throughout the public rooms, suggesting decades of travel and discovery. There is Scottish character, certainly, but it rarely slips into cliché. Tartan appears as an accent rather than a uniform. Mid-century furniture sits comfortably alongside more traditional pieces. Antique references are balanced by contemporary art, graphic fabrics and playful decorative details. The Map Room makes the concept particularly clear. Old cartography covers the walls, turning the space into the imaginary study of someone permanently planning another journey. It is theatrical, but never theme-park theatrical. The illusion works because the rooms still feel comfortable enough to inhabit.

The Garden at the Centre

The most striking transformation lies between the original townhouses. A formerly open courtyard has been enclosed beneath glass to create The Garden, a luminous interior conservatory filled with greenery, woven pendant lights, timber details and softly upholstered furniture. It changes the rhythm of the hotel completely. Instead of narrow corridors linking historic buildings, the courtyard becomes a shared living room — flooded with daylight even when Edinburgh outside is doing its best impression of winter. Breakfast stretches easily into coffee. Coffee into afternoon tea. Later, botanical cocktails and soft lighting shift the space toward evening. The Garden feels both inside and outside, formal and relaxed — a clever contemporary intervention within buildings whose street façades remain resolutely Georgian.

Rooms with Scottish Character

Across the hotel’s 199 rooms and suites, the same balancing act continues. The interiors reference classic travel and Scottish domesticity without becoming nostalgic recreations. Rich timber, tartan throws, illustrated wildlife prints and vintage-inspired furniture are mixed with contemporary lighting, crisp bathrooms and deeply comfortable beds. Some higher-category rooms introduce roll-top baths, record players and more generous sitting areas. The result is closer to staying in an eccentric city residence than a conventional luxury hotel. There are reminders of place everywhere, but they remain deliberately light-handed. You never forget you are in Edinburgh. You are simply spared the tartan avalanche.

From BABA to the Basement Pool

Charlotte Square has enough scale to operate almost like a small urban resort. BABA brings Eastern Mediterranean flavours into a colourful, highly social dining room, while The Garden offers the softer all-day counterpoint. Below ground, the mood changes again. The hotel’s spa and wellness area includes a swimming pool, sauna, steam room, gym and treatment spaces — a surprisingly substantial retreat hidden beneath the Georgian townhouses. That contrast is part of the appeal. One minute you are walking past eighteenth-century façades in Edinburgh’s New Town. The next you are swimming beneath mood lighting several floors below them.

Edinburgh Beyond the Postcard

The location places the hotel within one of the city’s most elegant districts, close to Princes Street, George Street and the galleries, restaurants and bars of New Town. Yet Charlotte Square itself provides a sense of enclosure and calm. That makes the hotel especially successful as an introduction to Edinburgh. Its architecture speaks clearly to the historic city. Its interiors belong to something more contemporary: layered, international, informal and slightly eccentric. The city’s past is present everywhere, but it is allowed to have some fun.

Why It Works

Kimpton Charlotte Square understands that heritage hotels do not need to behave reverentially. The Georgian buildings provide enough seriousness already. By introducing fictional biography, collected objects, mid-century references and a touch of visual mischief, the interiors make that heritage feel inhabited rather than preserved behind glass. And that fictional Scottish gentleman? By the end of a stay, you almost expect him to wander into The Garden, order a whisky and start explaining where he found the antique globe in the corner.