As spectacles go, the long line of exotically caparisoned elephants stretching away into the far distance, with their snooty memsahibs and bejeweled maharajahs perched atop them as they parade past the Red Fort amidst a phalanx of meticulously attired Indian soldiers, is as spectacular as it gets. It has me rooted to the spot – and not for the first time. Whilst in most hotels, including some of the world’s most prestigious, the journey from room to reception desk, restaurant, or swimming pool is a mundane and invariably visually underwhelming undertaking. That’s not the case at New Delhi’s Imperial Hotel.
The sprawling smog-bound metropolis’s (pop. 34 million and counting) very first luxury hotel, opened in 1936, houses one of the finest collections of colonial-era art in the world comprising over 5,500 paintings, lithographs, aquatints and other works from the late 17th to 19th centuries. Positioned all over the property, they are a constant and compelling source of fascination amidst the cavernous corridors and polished perfection of this most grand of Grande Dames. A museum masquerading as a hotel or a hotel that thinks it’s a museum? Either way, being enveloped by the Imperial’s rich embrace of Indian history, within which it’s also played a cameo role, is an experience as sublime as it is indeed unique.
The elephant procession is one of several pictorial renditions of the 1911 Delhi Durbar, a massive display of colonial power and prestige ostensibly to celebrate the accession of King-Emperor George V, who, unlike his father Edward VII, and grandmother Victoria, at least made the effort to turn up. That year also marked the official transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi, whereupon the British architect Lutyens embraced his mammoth task of creating New Delhi next to the ancient meandering maze of alleyways of what would become Old Delhi, still pulsating away unperturbed in its cacophony of chaos.
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The Imperial Hotel, so named by the socially assertive (read “pushy”) Indian Viceroy’s wife, Lady Willingdon, was constructed and owned by Ranjit Singh, the son of one of British India’s more prolific builders, Narain Singh, with the clear intention of it occupying pride of place in the newly configured capital. It occupied (and does to this day) a prime position on Queensway, which together with Kingsway (now renamed Janpath and Rajpath), were the most prestigious thoroughfares of the new capital. Immediately becoming, along with other glamorous outposts of upscale hospitality like the Strand in Rangoon, and Raffles in Singapore, one of the places to see and be seen in the eastern part of a planet still dominated by the British Empire. The hotel quickly acquired a cult status that has been maintained ever since.
Unlike most of those other famous hotels to have emerged from the tropical opulence of a world long since disappeared, however, the Imperial remains in the hands of its original family. There are no chains, no meddling corporate interventions, and no mini-Imperials rolled out across the world with 5,500 artworks on their walls. It remains a majestic building fulfilling its preordained purpose as Delhi’s preeminent luxury hotel.
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For a moment during the 1970s and 1980s, the Imperial seemed to flirt with a slide into obscurity to which so many other prestigious pre-war hotels had succumbed, but judicious oversight ensured that became a bump in the road on an otherwise long glamour-fuelled journey. Today, the Imperial, with miles of pristine Italian polished marble, Burmese teak, rosewood furniture and hand-knotted Persian carpets is as magnificent as it’s ever been.
Like any self-respecting grand hotel, it presents as a self-contained universe with a multitude of things unfolding in a never-ending round of frenetic activity. Sprawled across eight acres and connected to Janpath by a palm tree-lined drive, at the end of which resplendent Sikh doormen brandishing mustaches you could hang a hat on await. The Imperial is, as it was always intended to be, a seductive sanctuary from the madness of the metropolis.
There are 192 rooms and 43 suites culminating in the regally appointed Imperial Suite, 2,500 sq ft of unadulterated indulgence that’s played host to a back catalog of royalty and A-listers from Brangelina to Prince Albert of Monaco. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that dominated much of India’s post-independence political landscape also kept a permanent suite at the Imperial for years. The interior design of the accommodation is unapologetic in its heritage but still incorporates all of the ultra-contemporary accouterments expected from a modern luxury hotel. Skilfully sewn together, it’s a style template that whilst leaning heavily into its 1920s origins, sits very comfortably in its 2020s skin.
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Nine restaurants and bars incorporate the principal 1911 restaurant that leads out onto the expansive lawns, the scene of countless garden parties and society weddings. During the period leading up to independence in 1947, with relations between Hindus and Muslims, as well as the British remaining delicate, the Imperial served as neutral ground to meet and discuss plans for a possible partition.
The table where Mahatma Gandhi, Lord Mountbatten, Pandit Nehru and Muslim leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah, would sit to make the momentous decisions that continue to resonate around the international diplomatic landscape, remains in situ on the 1911 terrace. Those lucky enough to secure it can dine right there where history was made. Jinnah, in fact, formally declared the birth of Pakistan, of which he would become the country’s first leader, from the Imperial’s ballroom, just as a disaffected mob was making its way across the lawn. A portend, perhaps, of the terrible violence to come. Fortunately, the ballroom doors were shut tight and the hotel’s security staff, as dutiful and professional then as they are today, successfully defused the situation.
Spice Route is the Imperial’s fine dining destination specializing in South and Southeast Asian cuisine. The design and construction of Spice Route was overseen by 75-year-old Rajeev Sethi, a designer and artist revered in India as something of a cultural elder statesman. It required more than seven years before his fastidious expectations were eventually gratified, having brought in mural painters from a South Indian temple to painstakingly deploy their three-thousand-year-old skill set onto the walls using traditional vegetable and flower dyes. The result was an amazing, almost overwhelming immersive space consumed in a kaleidoscope of colors, where Spice Route, since its 1998 debut has remained one of the Indian capital’s most highly regarded restaurants.
If the horn-blaring, sun-baked, non-stop turbulent world bouncing about on the other side of the hotel’s gates simply cannot be countenanced, the Imperial’s unparalleled wellness offerings, spreading across 44,000 sq ft, will soon resolve that particular conundrum. The 82-ft-long pool is ensconced amidst the meticulously curated greenery of the gardens where every leaf on every tree and shrub looks as if it’s been subject to a pre-breakfast military-style inspection.
There’s a brand new 900-sq-ft yoga studio and a state-of-the-art gym, though it is perhaps the Imperial’s exquisitely configured spa that is the jewel in the wellness crown. Remodeled in 2022 and accessed by a dramatically stylish staircase spiraling down into a secret subterranean sanctuary of pampering, the Imperial’s spa is undoubtedly among the subcontinent’s best. Cocooned in tranquillity, with long atmospheric marble-lined corridors waiting for you to squeak your way down them, and 10 treatment rooms finished in traditional Indian thikri decoration, not least the fabulous couples Mughal Suite, it’s a sumptuous world within a world that very quickly renders the outside world irrelevant.
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Indian luxury hotels enjoy a justifiable reputation for stellar levels of service, often elevating already excellent guest experiences toward even loftier levels. As one of the stalwarts of the Indian luxury hospitality sector famously articulated it, “Guest is God”, though quite where this exceptional approach to hospitality has its origins is unclear.
Is it to do with India’s seemingly limitless pantheon of gods who are never far from the surface of this wonderfully rich and perennially fascinating culture? Might it be a remnant from the golden age of the princely states where, prior to independence, maharajas and nawabs basked in unbelievable opulence amidst unrestrained levels of luxury?
Not only does the Imperial embody this singularly Indian approach to superlative standards of service, at times it feels as if one has stumbled across the mother lode. From the unwaveringly helpful staff conveying very personalized assistance to the hotel’s guests inside Delhi’s famously challenging airport, to the relentlessly polite and dutiful security staff often despatched out with guests in need of a little chaperoning, and the charmingly old-school details like the rattan and polished wood trays in which laundry is returned, service at the Imperial is often framed in a league of its own.
With its feet firmly planted in the long-lost world of pomp, pageantry, and polo-playing maharajas, its iconic landmark status at the heart of India’s capital city, and its own special place in the nation’s struggle for independence, the Imperial continues to relish its role as an enduring and quintessential feature of the Indian landscape.
The Imperial Suite from $28,000 per night. Contact sales@theimperialindia.com, +91 11 4150 1234, theimperialindia.com
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