By Adam Bloodworth
This is the best £250 you’ll spend in London this spring…
Diving into the new rooftop pool at the art’otel Battersea Power Station, it was hardly the picture of spring. The temperature was a brisk eight degrees and the sky? A bundle of impenetrable clouds curling in opposing directions.
The sun beds, decked out in similar shades of grey as the sky, sat desolate. Two had towels laid on them by staff who were presumably hopeful this pristine empty pool might get some use.
It certainly deserves to: it is utterly spectacular. I can’t think of any other open-air rooftop pool in London with such an iconic view, a stone’s throw from the restored chimney bases of Battersea Power Station. They feel so close you could reach out and touch them as you do your backstroke.
There are the bouji rooftop pools of Soho House, but those require membership and none have impressive panoramas. Then there is the sumptuous spa at Claridge’s, but that’s underground, and the incredibly high pool on the 56th floor of the Shard, which I broke into at 1am, but none have anything on this.
I glide a few laps back and forth, keeping an eye on those chimneys, just to convince myself I’ve done a bit of exercise. How could I ever leave?
There’s something money-can’t-buy about being cradled by bathtub-warm water while suspended 16 floors above the capital. It’s so novel, the biting wind doesn’t factor in my mind. There are eyelines into some of the most expensive apartments in the city. Some of the new residential properties built as part of the Power Station development going for an eye-watering £16million, but one thing I glean from my viewpoint up here is that money doesn’t necessarily afford you the ability to declutter your living room. Looking directly into the Power Station, staff are working behind desks in the Apple UK headquarters, another arm to this £9 billion development project.
Back to my backstroke, and I glide a few laps back and forth, keeping an eye on those chimneys, just to convince myself I’ve done a bit of exercise. Then I make for the hot tub with jets and consider changing my plans for later that day. How could I ever leave?
You can have all this. The artotel, which has just opened, gives access to its pool to hotel guests. Throughout March a room costs around £250 and from April it’s around £300. There’s a rooftop bar with beers on tap and lounge chairs in gentle shades of pink. At the moment it feels as if the designers have dumped these luxury furnishings in the wrong city, because it’s so cold up there, but mark my words: when the weather warms up this’ll be the best spring staycation investment in the capital this summer. But be warned: you can’t access the pool unless you’re a hotel guest, so get a staycation in the diary and pack your swimming trunks.
On the floor below the pool is the Joia restaurant, run by Henrique de Passoa, a Portuguese chef personality and the runner of Alma, Lisbon’s only restaurant boasting two Michelin stars. Ask for a table with a Power Station view then order the Txuleton Angus forerib and the Suquet stew with monkfish and red prawns. In the adjoining bar, drink the prata cocktail with clarified chocolate and the safira rosa with mezcal and grapefruit soda, where a DJ mixes tunes with the Power Station as a backdrop. It’s the sort of aesthetic that might be cringey if the view wasn’t so astonishing.
As for the hotel, the rooms are pleasant, the bed comfortable and the staff decent. The bedrooms are cheerful explosions of primary colours, even if the interiors feel slightly shipped in en masse, designed to be ripped out again when the look becomes passé. There’s also the slight issue that there aren’t enough lifts to cater to demand for the rooftop. “It’s too late now,” one staff member confesses, saying what we were all thinking. But come the morning, I wake content, enjoying the decent views from my 13th floor bed. But I didn’t wait long. It was back up to the pool for more of the good stuff.
Art’otel Battersea takes reservations online
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