The King's Arms at Casterbridge

Dorchester is the Casterbridge of Thomas Hardy's novels; the places he describes in his novels are often real, usually with disguised names. This fine inn in High East Street features in Chapter 5 of The Mayor of Casterbridge. It is the place where Elizabeth-Jane and her mother stop by the town band to look through the open window at a grand function at which Henchard, the Mayor, presides. The first picture the reader has of the main character is through that bow window in the middle of the photo (you can see a chandelier).

The building at whose doors they had pitched their music-stands was the chief hotel in Casterbridge - namely, the King's Arms. A spacious bow-window projected into the street over the main portico, and from the open sashes came the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses, and the drawing of corks. The blinds, moreover, being left unclosed, the whole interior of this room could be surveyed from the top of the stone steps to the road-waggon office opposite, for which reason a knot of idlers had gathered there

The building is as described but I think the conveniently placed 'stone steps' opposite may have been imaginary.

Pevsner in The Buildings of England: Dorset writes rather more prosaically:

The Kings Arms Hotel ... has a fine expansive early 19th century front, a symmetrical composition about a generously glazed window bow.