Your passport to Pimlico Road

Interiors fans will fall in love with one of Europe's most feted design districts.

- Olivia Lidbury

Belgravia is a zone 1 enclave choc-full of contradictions. One of the most expensive residential pockets in the country, its highly desirable garden squares are lined with stately stucco townhouses that were once home to Margaret Thatcher (Chester Square) and Vivien Leigh (Eaton Square). Walk down Lyall Street, where the palatial, Grade II-listed childhood home of the Delevingne sisters will set you back £21 million, and it’s all embassies and blacked-out Bentleys.

But the area is served by the less elegant Victoria Station and the ghastly coach station where tourists seem unable to walk in a straight line with their wheely suitcases. Down Elizabeth Street, upmarket boutiques are eclipsed by day-trippers queuing for Peggy Porschen cupcakes and posing with sprigs of eucalyptus outside boujee deli Bayley & Sage — all for the ‘gram.

Persevere to the bottom of Ebury Street and you are greeted with one of Europe's most celebrated design districts: Pimlico Road. Populated with the crème de la crème, there's Fermoie, Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler and Howe for fabrics, Soane for handcrafted rattan furniture, Linley for heirloom pieces, Bonadea for tableware and Cox London, a furniture, lighting and art studio founded by Christopher and Nicola Cox. Flanked by Pimlico “proper” to the south and prim-and-proper Chelsea to the west, “you would not think you were in the middle of London, it’s like being in a village in Wiltshire or the Cotswolds,” says Milly Allender, showroom manager at Plain English kitchens.