The Colonnade Hotel
Near a canal filled with colorful narrow boats in the Little Venice neighborhood, this lovely town house offers individually styled rooms, some with rich brocades, velvets, and antiques, others with balconies. The 1920s elevator (believed to be one of the oldest still working in the United Kingdom) and the Wedgwood fireplace in the lobby add to the historic style, as does the "Sigmund Freud Suite" (Freud visited regularly in 1938). It's also the birthplace of Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computer science and the man who deciphered the German Enigma code in World War II.
