The Corinthia Hotel in London is fast becoming the talk of the town, as early visitors invited to tour the project site absorb the scale, magnitude and opulence of the massive project underway.

The £270 million development is one year away from completion, and work is progressing according to plan. The 40,000 square metre site has been entirely stripped down, partially demolished and is now being rebuilt and fitted out. The project is being hailed as the first new grand hotel to be built in London for over a century.

The building itself is a landmark, formerly the Ministry of Defence straddling Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall Place, with panoramic views over Trafalgar Square, the River Thames and all of the major sights of Whitehall.

The Corinthia Hotel is a 300-bedroom luxury hotel with the largest bedrooms in London, and includes 45 suites, some of which are located on duplex floors inside the historic turrets and serviced by private lifts and private terraces. A 3,000 square metre spa, unique in design and scope, will complement the hotel.

Furthermore, 12 ambassadorial apartments, the largest one occupying over 1,000 square metres, are being developed at the luxury end of the market, for eventual use as prime residences in central London.

As work progresses, select members of the London establishment, opinion formers and associates of Corinthia are being invited on a regular basis to visit the project and see for themselves the new hotel unfolding before their eyes.

The first such gathering was held last week, when senior directors from Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Coutts and Credit Suisse together with invitees from Harrods and the Prince’s Regeneration Trust, were given a tour of the project personally conducted by Alfred Pisani, chairman of the Corinthia Group.

At the end of the tour, the guests were treated to a sumptuous lunch prepared on site in a temporary kitchen by Massimo Riccioli, the celebrated chef owner of La Rosetta Restaurant in Rome, Italy, who has agreed to personally relocate to London to be the chef patron of the specialty restaurant in the Corinthia Hotel London.

The Corinthia Hotel & Residences in London is scheduled to open in the last quarter of 2010.