The Ritz London

Charles Mewès and Arthur Davis raised what amounts to a Parisian apartment block on Piccadilly, granite along the ground floor and Portland stone above, set over an arcade modelled on the Rue de Rivoli that people still walk under coming from Green Park station. César Ritz gave it his name and had a hand in the planning, but a collapse in 1902 had ended his working life and he was not running the hotel when it opened in 1906. The interiors run to Louis XVI throughout. Very little about the architecture is English.

The rooms keep the Edwardian scheme rather than update it, with period furnishings, richly woven carpets, hand-finished mouldings, and silk on the walls a category up from the 452-square-foot deluxe. Beds are Sleepeezee, which holds a royal warrant of its own, and the marble bathrooms have heated floors. A panel at the bedside works the lights and the blinds.

Tea is served five times a day, from half past eleven until half past seven, and no gentleman sits down to it without a jacket and tie. Twenty loose-leaf teas are on the list, sourced by the hotel's tea master, Giandomenico Scanu, who travels out to the plantations himself, and the Ritz Royal Blend is poured nowhere else. Cake comes last, wheeled over on a trolley and cut at the table.

John Williams runs the kitchen as executive chef, and in 2025 the National Restaurant Awards named the restaurant their National Restaurant of the Year. It placed joint second in 2026. The Rivoli Bar keeps its restored vaulted ceilings picked out in hand-painted gold. The royal warrant the hotel holds covers banqueting and catering, granted in 2002 and granted again by King Charles III in 2024. He granted the first one too.