University Arms

About University Arms

There has been a hotel on this corner of Regent Street since 1834, but the building you see today is the result of a substantial rebuild completed in 2018 by the architect John Simpson, who replaced a bland 1960s frontage with a classical entrance and restored the Edwardian character of the older wings. The result reads as a proper city hotel rather than a converted house: a colonnaded doorway, a lobby with a working fireplace, and a library room lined with books about Cambridge that guests are free to take to a chair.

The 192 rooms and suites are spread over four floors and look out over Parker's Piece, the twenty-five acre common where the modern rules of association football were first drawn up, or across Regent Street and the hotel's own inner courtyard. Interiors by Martin Brudnizki lean on the university without being heavy-handed - tall Victorian sash windows, writing desks, ottomans, framed prints of the colleges and headboards in college colours. Rooms on the Parker's Piece side are the ones to ask for, particularly on the upper floors where the view opens out across the grass to the spires beyond.

Parker's Tavern, the ground-floor restaurant, is the reason many Cambridge residents come here. Tristan Welch cooks generous British food - potted shrimps, whole roasted fish, proper puddings - in a room panelled and lit to resemble a college dining hall, and it also serves one of the better afternoon teas in the city. There is a small gym, a business centre, bicycles for guests and 24-hour room service. The location is as central as Cambridge gets: the market square is a five-minute walk, King's Parade eight, and the railway station is a mile south, which is an easy walk or a short taxi.