The Grand Hotel Leicester is a Grade II listed historic hotel on Granby Street in the city centre of Leicester, England.
It was designed by Cecil Ogden and Amos Hall[1] and built between 1897–98 by Orson Wright.[2] The wedding-cake style top on the corner of Grandby Street and Belvoir Street was added by Amos Hall, who also designed the Silver Arcade in the Edwardian period.
The Kings Hall, with its ornate gilt capped columns and extravagant use of decorative marble, was envisaged by Orson Wright and designed by Amos Hall. Located on the first floor, it could cater for 350 people; part of the building was at one time a cinema.[3]
The hotel has always been considered one of Leicester's most prestigious,[4] but arguably its heyday was during Victorian times. The hotel is in an area designated as a Heritage Action Zone, allowing the securing of a grant from Historic England in 2022 to return the hotel entrance and frontage shops to their original Victorian appearance.[5]
Today the hotel is rated as 4 star and was operated until recently by Mercure Hotels, a division of the multinational hotel company Accor, as first Mercure Leicester City Hotel and then Mercure Leicester The Grand Hotel.