Handel and Hendrix in London — Mayfair

The building at 23-25 Brook Street in Mayfair contains one of music history's most remarkable coincidences: the composer George Frideric Handel lived at number 25 from 1723 until his death in 1759, and Jimi Hendrix lived in the flat at number 23 — the adjacent building — from 1968 to 1969 with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham. Hendrix and Handel were both transformative musicians who arrived in London from elsewhere and found the city the right stage for their ambitions; both were enormously influential on subsequent generations; and both, it seems, were near neighbours across two and a half centuries.

Hendrix rented the top-floor flat with Etchingham in July 1968, and it became his London base during the final phase of his life — the period that produced "Electric Ladyland" and some of his most celebrated live performances. He reportedly visited the Handel museum on the ground floor and expressed admiration for the composer. The flat has been carefully restored to its 1968 appearance based on Etchingham's recollections: the wallpaper, furniture, and fixtures are authentic to the period. It is possible to sit in the rooms where Hendrix slept and worked.

Handel and Hendrix in London opened as a combined museum in 2016 and is one of the most thoughtfully conceived music heritage sites in the country. Handel's rooms are separately preserved and interpret his life and work with scholarly care. The combination — baroque master and psychedelic genius sharing a wall across centuries — is too good to be invented, and the museum does full justice to both. Brook Street in Mayfair looks now much as it would have in Hendrix's time.