The most elegant quarter of an already elegant town — a neighbourhood of Regency terraces, garden squares, and caryatid-decorated shopfronts south of the town centre. Montpellier Walk, the main thoroughfare, has the distinctive feature of figures carved into the pilasters between the shop windows, giving the street an unusual character. The whole area was developed in the 1820s and 1830s as Cheltenham's fashionable residential district.
Today Montpellier is home to independent boutiques, good restaurants, wine bars, and a concentration of antique and art shops clustered around the Rotunda — the former spa pump room that now houses a bank but remains a visible landmark. The Suffolks, just east of Montpellier, has a similar feel. Between the two, you find the best of what Cheltenham has to offer away from the chain stores on the High Street.