Ritz Paris

César Ritz opened at 15 Place Vendôme in 1898, in partnership with Auguste Escoffier, who built its kitchens, and with electric light on every floor. The largest rebuild since that opening began in 2012 and ran four years, a thousand craftspeople working under Thierry W. Despont, who redrew all 142 rooms and suites. The hotel reopened its doors in 2016.

The pool runs under a painted sky, a fresco in trompe-l'oeil over a mosaic of twin mermaids, with music playing underwater. The spa keeps its own address on the square, at number 17.

The Grand Jardin lies at the heart of the hotel, lime trees clipped into marquee shapes above boxwood planters, white flowers and magnolias, wide enough to take four hundred standing. The Deluxe Suites look out over it.

The smallest room in the house runs 35 square metres and still holds a marble fireplace, one corner for reading and another for writing, and a Belle Époque lamp. Some of the prestige suites carry the names of former guests, Proust and Chaplin and Hemingway among them. One evokes Gabrielle Chanel's apartment at 31 rue Cambon, Coromandel screens and panels of Chinese lacquer on the walls, while the reception room of the Suite Impériale is a listed historic monument with six metres of ceiling above it. No two are the same.