On the first day of March in 2011, I received a phone call from a reporter from a local paper to let me know that the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in King's Cross was going to open its doors to the public soon and he asked me if I could write a feature on this iconic building for his newspaper. I was in Mumbai when I picked up the call, travelling in an auto-rickshaw outside the Victoria Terminus now known as CST - a building that bore an uncanny resemblance to the one housing the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel except that it was made of sandstone whereas the one in London was made of bricks. I'd like to have been back in London to tour the building that had intrigued me for years whenever I visited the British Library. I didn't know the reason for it being left empty. The clock tower of this Victorian Gothic building actually dwarfed that of the recently-built British Library.

It was Robert the Concierge who told me one day that the landmark building at King's Cross was going to be restored and would open as a 'Renaissance' hotel. It could take years of painstaking work, he said, to bring this building, which was originally built as the Midland Grand Hotel during the golden age of the railways, back to its former glory. The name King's Cross invoked images of a grungy part of London before the regeneration of the area started 20 years ago. An acquaintance of mine from Punjab liked to drop the possessive and called it King Cross. When I cycled through the back roads of King's Cross for the first time and saw the rusty giant gasholders, it was like drifting into an industrial wasteland. I shunned the area until the British Library moved to Euston Road from Great Russell Street in 1999 and I often visited one of its reading rooms.

The first high-speed train arrived in 2007 when the Eurostar moved from Waterloo to St Pancras Station. In 2008 the Guardian newspaper moved its office from 119 Farringdon Road to a swanky new glass building in the area and King's Cross became the biggest transport hub in Europe. I often went to St Pancras station to meet a friend for coffee who commuted on a high-speed train to Kent; and I once attended the wedding of another friend in the Town Hall in Judd Street. I visited the Town Hall again when my son was born to get a birth certificate for him and sat with a registrar of births, a good-natured Bengali lady, in an office overlooking the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

When Robert broke the news of the new Renaissance Hotel to be opened in King's Cross, the landmark building in Midland Road looked somewhat spooky. Whenever I took a Eurostar train from St Pancras during the next few years, I found a lot of construction work going on around the building while it was being restored to open more than a century and a half after it was purpose-built as a hotel. I passed by the hotel many times after it opened, noticing a doorman in a bowler hat and waistcoat standing outside, but couldn't find an excuse to go inside. I found myself closer to the hotel while standing in the Arcade of St Pancras Station and caught sight of the enormous bronze statue known as The Lovers plus a gilded Dent clock. Sometimes someone would break into a tune on the piano in the Arcade, causing brisk walkers to come to a halt during their daily commute.

I had wondered what the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel looked like from the inside until quite recently when I happened to meet its new GM, Anne Legrand, by chance in our hotel and she suggested that I pay a visit. I cycled through Camden as usual to get there and saw the futuristic new building of the Francis Crick Institute standing tall in Midland Road before I reached the British Library, which is hosting a Shakespeare in Ten Acts exhibition until September.

I locked my bike in a rack outside the British Library and walked up the driveway of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel to be welcomed by the doorman in his bowler hat and waistcoat. A white Rolls Royce parked in the forecourt had 'WISHS X' as its number plate. But walking into the lobby of the hotel was like travelling back in time. I was transported to an era when Queen Victoria was the Empress of India. There is a hall behind the Reception known as Booking Office, which has been turned into a bar and restaurant. Anne Legrand had very kindly asked one of her staff, Maria, to show me around. She took me through the Booking Office and through a door at the back that opened directly into St Pancras station where a Eurostar train was standing at the platform. It was surreal to see a high-speed train – a marvel of modern engineering – in front of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, which was built when trains were powered by steam engines. My host also showed me the ladies' smoking room which must have caused a scandal during Victorian times when you couldn't even mention the word 'trousers' in front of a lady.

George Gilbert Scott, son of a clergyman, had designed the Midland Grand Hotel like a cathedral. There are images of seven Christian virtues painted on the wall at the top of its spiralling staircase and when you lower your gaze from the landing it induces vertigo. I was shown a room named after Queen Victoria. It has a very high ceiling and one of the walls is painted in emerald green. It's a most spacious room, as befits a Queen.

The St Pancras Hotel is aptly named 'Renaissance', since its opening has played a role in the rebirth of King's Cross. I can imagine guests arriving in the horse-drawn vehicles known as Hansom cabs when it was called the Midland Grand Hotel. Today travellers can enjoy afternoon tea in the Hansom Lounge of St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. It has two identical miniature statues of The Lovers on display in a Perspex box.

Iqbal Ahmed
London Marriott Regents Park
0044 7939 3428 00
Marriott