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Soon You Can Experience James Bond's Birthplace For Yourself
After Over a Century of Being Closed, the Old War Office is Making a Comeback
Pirates, what other building can lay claim to being the birthplace of James Bond, Winston Churchill's command base, and a filming site from "the Crown?"
London's Old War Office, built in 1906, is all of that and more. It's also been closed to the public for around 100 years, when we heard it's finally going to become accessible to the public again we just had to let you know. Read on to learn about how you can see the place for yourself and why you'd want to.
Details
London's Old War Office is one of those places that's just filled with history and lore — some from the political side of things (Churchill, the Royal family), but also a lot from pop culture. Most importantly, this is the place where Sir Ian Fleming created the legend that is James Bond. Though it has been closed to the public, five different Bond films were filmed here, along with scenes from "the Crown."
A lot of stories about the building come from the pretty intense network of tunnels beneath it that have supposedly been used for a range of purpose during the part 100 years. Some claim that spies were known to make use of the tunnels, while others claim that they were used strictly to give governmental officials easy routes to somewhere else. All we know for sure is that there are a lot of mysterious tunnels, and us pirates, we really like mysterious.
So, how can I experience the Old War Office?
You essentially have two options, come 2022 that is.
Firstly, part of the building will be transformed into a 125-room, luxury hotel, which will be called Raffles London at the OWO. It's still unclear what the nightly rates will look like, but surely there will be a deal to had as the 2022 opening gets closer.
The second option requires a slightly more serious commitment. To be billed as OWO Residences by Raffles, the other part of the Old War Office will be turned into 85 luxury apartments. With a massive pool in-house, a gym, spa facilities, and onsite dining, these apartments sound like they plan to go all out. The only catch is that you'll have to throw down a cool $8 million to buy one, and that's just the starting price for the smaller ones.
Most of us will probably consider option number one for this bucket list experience, but if you've got insane amounts of capital sitting around or have a friend that does (or will by 2022), number two could be the way to go!