The Imperial – an opulent restaurant bar design by Alexander & Co

Australian studio Alexander & Co has recently completed the Imperial Restaurant in Sydney, a very special place reminiscent of an old abandoned mansion, where faded opulence becomes the main charm of the environment.

The restaurant is located in the suburb of Erskineville and has been a point of reference for LGBT community since 1983, but in the last two decades, the building had been left in a state of neglect, devoid of any kind of maintenance. The restyling carried out by the studio has given a new personality to the structure, maintaining its vintage and decadent soul.

The ground floor now contains a 250-seat restaurant called Priscillas, named after the 1994 comedy The Adventures of Priscilla – Queen of the Desert, a film that follows the journey through Australian outback of a transgender woman and two drag queens.

Many of the walls that had been worn by time have been torn like this and if necessary they have been freshened with a coat of white paint, with the addition in the dining room a new fresco that seems to have come out of a baroque church.