The Grand Brighton

About The Grand Brighton

The Grand has stood on Kings Road since 1864, an enormous white wedding cake of a building that is the first thing most people photograph when they reach the Brighton seafront. It was designed as the grandest hotel on the south coast, survived the IRA bombing of 1984 during the Conservative party conference, and has just come through a refurbishment reported at around seventeen million pounds that has reworked the bedrooms, the public rooms and the spa without touching the Victorian bones.

Bedrooms run from compact standard rooms at the back of the building to sea-view rooms and suites at the front, where the tall windows and small balconies look straight out at the Channel with the Palace Pier to the east and the skeleton of the West Pier to the west. Rooms on the higher floors are the ones to ask for: the view opens up and the traffic on Kings Road fades. Interiors are contemporary but restrained, with the original cornices and proportions left to do the work.

Eating and drinking centre on Cyan, the main restaurant, with the Victoria Bar and Lounge for cocktails and the Victoria Terrace for afternoon tea, still one of the more formal versions of it in the city. The L.RAPHAEL spa and gym occupy their own floor, with treatment rooms and thermal facilities, and the hotel's ballrooms make it a fixture for weddings and conferences.

It suits people who want the classic Brighton seafront experience with everything on site, and it is well placed for the Pavilion, The Lanes and both piers, all within a ten-minute walk. It is a large hotel and can feel busy when an event is on, and there is no hotel car park, so drivers should budget for the Regency Square multi-storey a few hundred yards west.