Editorial
London has more genuinely atmospheric bars per square mile than any other city in the world. The Victorian gin palaces, the City taverns unchanged since the Great Fire's rebuilding, the Soho jazz cellars and the Mayfair private clubs that still operate as though the twentieth century was an imposition — all of them are here, open to the public and waiting. We have been visiting the best of them for years. These are the ones that reward the effort of finding them.
London's oldest pubs carry a weight of history that no amount of reclaimed timber and exposed brick can manufacture. The bars below are genuinely old: built before photography, before electricity, sometimes before the city that surrounds them. They are also still serving drinks.
Soho and East London's atmospheric bars are a different kind of experience: rooms that have built their atmosphere through intent and curation rather than centuries of accumulated use. When done well — as in the bars below — the effect is indistinguishable from the genuine article.
The City of London and Southwark contain the oldest surviving licensed premises in the country. The bars below are all within a mile of London Bridge; all were serving drinks when Shakespeare was writing plays 400 metres away.
London's advantage over every other atmospheric bar city is simply that so many of the buildings are genuinely old. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and The Princess Louise carry their atmosphere in the timber and plaster — it doesn't need to be designed into them. The cocktail bars and jazz rooms on this list have achieved something more deliberate but equally effective. Together, they represent the range of what London can offer when the city is at its most itself.
Where to start: The Princess Louise for the purest Victorian gin palace experience, Nightjar for the most considered atmospheric cocktail bar in the city, Dukes for the specific and unrepeatable experience of a St James's hotel bar done exactly right. None of them require a booking except Nightjar, where a reservation is essential on weekends.
Sofia covers the European bar scene and has been writing about London's pubs and bars for eight years. She considers The Princess Louise the most important interior in the city, drinks at Nightjar whenever she can get a booking, and has been to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese more times than she can accurately count.