The Ritz Paris in Paris : The Ritz Paris is a Hotel five stars located in the heart of Paris, at 15 place Vendôme, in the 1st arrondissement of the capital. It is an adjoining building of the Ministry of Justice, to the northwest of the square. The Ritz Paris is considered one of the most beautiful, large and luxurious hotels in the world.
The hotel, which today has 142 rooms, was founded by the Swiss hotelier César Ritz, in collaboration with the chef Auguste Escoffier, in 1898. The Ritz quickly established a reputation for luxury, with notable guests including political figures, film stars, singers, etc. Several of its suites are named in honor of prestigious guests of the hotel, for example the stylist Coco Chanel, who lived in the hotel until her death, or the writer Ernest Hemingway, who often came to the Ritz . One of the hotel's bars, the Hemingway Bar, is dedicated to the writer who often visited there, and Espadon, a world-famous restaurant, attracts chefs from all over the world, the Ritz being a full school.
During the Second World War, under the Occupation of Paris, the hotel was requisitioned by the Germans to be the headquarters of the Luftwaffe and to receive the Führer's guests. Marshal Göring, head of the Luftwaffe as well as the commander-in-chief of the city of Paris resided there. After the death of César Ritz's son, Charles, in 1976, the last members of the Ritz family sold the establishment in 1979 to Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed. In August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales and Mohamed Al-Fayed's son Dodi, the princess's lover, dined in the hotel's Imperial Suite before their fatal car crash.
History of the Ritz hotel: On February 3, 1705, Antoine Bitaut de Vaillé (lord of Vaillé and advisor to the Grand Council), bought for 35 pounds a lot on Place Vendôme including the Hôtel de Villette, the Hôtel de Coigny and the Gramont hotel. In 000, César Ritz bought the Hôtel de Gramont and had it transformed by the architect Charles Mewès into a large luxury hotel. Ritz was director of the Savoy Hotel, in London (United Kingdom), and collaborated with his deputy Henry Elles, who managed the hotel until his death in 1897, and with the chef de cuisine Auguste Escoffier. The hotel opened its doors on June 1, 1898, during a sumptuous reception, and from then on became a popular place for high society. César Ritz equips his hotel with period-style furniture with all modern comforts: elevator, electricity and water on each floor, the 159 rooms have their own bathroom and a telephone.
The building has been classified as a historic monument since May 17, 1930.
The Ritz, from the first years, welcomed prestigious personalities such as Jean Cocteau, Colette, Paul Morand or the writer Marcel Proust who took up residence in a private room of the hotel, who came there when his health allowed him to leave. his room at 102 boulevard Haussmann, where his asthma often forced him to remain bedridden. It was partly transformed into a Red Cross military hospital during the First World War. During the Roaring Twenties, the attraction of Europe and prohibition pushed Americans to come to the old continent. In 1921, the hotel management decided to isolate a space on the ground floor in which drinks were served: the Café Parisien, a bar reserved exclusively for men, welcomed personalities such as Cole Porter, F. Scott Fitzgerald ( who wrote the short story A Diamond as Big as the Ritz), Count Armand de La Rochefoucauld or Ernest Hemingway. Charles Ritz's wife insolently invited herself there, she convinced the hotel to open a second bar opposite the first in 1926, the Café des dames renamed Petit Bar in 1934.
In June 1940, during the Occupation of Paris by the Germans, the Luftwaffe (the air forces of Nazi Germany) partly requisitioned the Ritz (unlike the Lutetia or the Meurice which were entirely requisitioned) which at that time had 450 employees . It seems that the palace was spared because César Ritz and his German-speaking wife Marie-Louise were Swiss, so the hotel was considered “neutral territory”. The Luftwaffe set up its headquarters in the building on rue Cambon, while its leader Hermann Göring took over the imperial suite, and the palace overlooking Place Vendôme continued to receive clients: art dealers who looted the works. art for Göring's personal collection; Arletty with her lover, Nazi officer Hans Jürgen Soehring, assessor at the Luftwaffe War Council; Coco Chanel with her lover Hans Gunther von Dincklage. The hotel remained a palace, even during the bombings: Coco Chanel went to the Ritz air raid shelters preceded by a servant who carried her gas mask on a satin cushion. At this time, the palace also concealed allied aviators, fugitives, Jews or resistance fighters whom the staff sheltered in secret rooms or maids' rooms. The hotel bartender, Frank Meier, serves as a dormant mailbox for Operation Valkyrie while Blanche Auzello - née Rubenstein -, Jewish American wife of the palace director Claude Auzello, helps the Resistance, and is tortured by the Gestapo in June 1944.
After the war, the Ritz regained its prestige and welcomed great celebrities such as the writer Ernest Hemingway (who invented the legend according to which he came to “personally liberate” the palace, submachine gun in hand and accompanied by a group of resistance fighters, on August 25, 1944 and some of his notes forgotten in 1928 in a Vuitton trunk were found in 1956 and published posthumously in 1964 under the title Paris est une fête), the actor Charlie Chaplin or even the stylist Coco Chanel who lived for more than thirty years and who died in 1971 in his apartment on rue Cambon, in the hotel, a few steps from his shop located on the same street. The Ritz also hosts the Shah of Iran, the writer Jean-Paul Sartre and the singer Elton John.
But the palace lives on its reputation. Victim of conflicts between its shareholders (Charles Ritz was chairman of the board of directors until his death in 1976) and lack of investments, its clientele was aging. It was therefore a hotel in decline that in 1979, the widow of Charles Ritz, Monique, sold to the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed. He invested 250 million dollars to completely renovate it, without stopping its activity. To do this, an underground network is set up from a well dug from Place Vendôme. A spa, equipped with a 17-meter swimming pool, is built and each room is restored identically. The renovation of the hotel was led by architect Bernard Gaucherel from 1980 to 1987.
On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana and her friend Dodi Al-Fayed, son of Mohammed Al-Fayed, dined in the hotel's imperial suite, before their fatal car accident under the Alma Bridge.
In order to be completely renovated and to claim the officially labeled palace class, the hotel is closed on August 1, 2012. The work, designed by architect Thierry Despont16 orchestrated by Didier Beautemps and his team (Atelier COS), estimated at 140 million euros, was due to be completed in the summer of 2014 but was delayed. In addition, the hotel under construction suffered a major fire on January 19, 2016, in the early morning, on the seventh and last floor, which damaged the roof. The reopening does not take place until June 6, 2016. The number of rooms increases from 159 to 142, all different, and the hotel takes the opportunity to create new spaces: the winter lounge, the Proust lounge and the Petit Ritz , a brasserie replacing the Ritz Club, the summer restaurant under a mobile glass roof, the extension of the ballroom, the integration of cutting-edge techniques in the rooms, the revolving door now automated.
On January 10, 2018, a robbery took place at the Ritz 21. Three armed criminals dressed as painters seized luxury watches and jewelry displayed in several windows, for a total amount estimated at 4 million euros, but they did not are unable to escape due to the automatic door locking. They pass the loot through a window to two accomplices outside who are quickly arrested. All the jewelry is found.
The operation of the hotel is entrusted to The Ritz Hotel Limited, a company incorporated under British law registered under number 572219913 but not required to publish its accounts in France.
Palace: The Ritz is one of the seven Parisian palaces in the unofficial sense of the term, but it does not currently have the palace distinction, an official recognition established at the end of 2010. It is nevertheless listed in numerous guides as one of the most prestigious hotels in the world.
It also includes a gym, a beauty salon and the largest private swimming pool in Paris, equipped with thermal jets, in which classical music is broadcast underwater.
The staff numbers 600 employees, including around a hundred in the kitchen.
Note in the hall the magnificent main staircase restored in 1976 by the cabinetmaker Roland Kursner, a rare piece which contributes to the elegance of the place: its black wrought iron banister is covered with a copper handrail and its carpet step is held by brass bars.
Rooms and suites: The hotel now has 142 rooms including 56 suites and 15 prestigious suites with a view of Place Vendôme, such as the Coco Chanel suite.
The rooms are equipped with an ultra-flat screen inlaid in the mirrors, Wi-Fi, Internet access as well as a mini-bar and a radio. The suites are composed of a large bathroom, a living room, a bedroom and this depends on the surface area of the suite. The clients, wealthy tourists, are 40% American, 12% British, 10% Middle Eastern and 10% Russian in 2006.
Restaurant: L'Espadon gourmet restaurant, created in 1956 by Charles Ritz. The kitchen director, Michel roth and the executive chef of the restaurant Arnaud Faye, were awarded a second star in the Michelin Guide in March 200927. The famous chef Auguste Escoffier is also at the origin of the worldwide fame of the palace restaurant. In 2015, when the hotel reopened, Nicolas Sale took over the reins of this restaurant.
Bars: The hotel has 3 bars:
– the Vendôme bar,
– the Ritz Bar,
– the Hemingway bar, initially the Ladies' Bar, reserved for women at the beginning of the 1994th century, then the Le Petit Bar which since 1899 owes its name to the American writer Ernest Hemingway (1961-XNUMX) and is renowned for its cocktails including the famous Bloody Mary, which according to legend was created for the writer so that his wife, Mary Welsh, nicknamed Bloody Mary, would not detect the smell of alcohol.
– Bibliography: Pauline-Gaïa Laburte, Ritzy, ed. Albin Michel, 2016 (fictionalized biography)
Claude Roulet, Ritz: a story more beautiful than the legend, Paris, Quai Voltaire, 1998, 188 p. (ISBN 2-912517-04-4 and 978-2-912517-04-3, OCLC 264676553, BnF notice no FRBNF36984785), republished under the title Tout sur le Ritz!, (La Table Ronde, 2016), traces the history of Place Vendôme, gives the biography of César Ritz and tells the history of the hotel up to its centenary.
Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Hotel on Place Vendome: Life, Death, and Betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, Harper, 2014, 320 p. (ISBN 978-0-061791-08-6, online presentation [archive]), translated into French under the title: 15, place Vendôme. The Ritz under the Occupation, Vuibert editions, September 2014.
Louis Énault, Hotel Ritz, Society of Art Publications, 1899.
- Movie theater :
1951: in An American in Paris (1951) Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) goes with Milo Roberts (Nina Foch) to the latter's hotel room at the Ritz Hotel.
1957: in Ariane (Love in the Afternoon), by Billy Wilder, it is at the Ritz that Franck Flannagan (Gary Cooper) receives his Parisian lovers, among whom slips through the window the young cellist Audrey Hepburn.
1966: in How to Steal a Million Dollars, by William Wyler, Simon Dermott (Peter O'Toole) stays at the Ritz, and Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) comes to visit him regularly, particularly at the restaurant.
2001: in The Three Kings, Balthazar and Gaspard spend a night at the Ritz.
2006: in the film Da Vinci Code, Robert Langdon takes a shower in a room and looks at an embroidered towel at the Ritz Paris Hotel; the hero of the film leaves the hotel to go to the Louvre.
– Television:
2011: during season 2 of MasterChef, a dish assembly test takes place at the Ritz;
2018: in the TV film Mystère place Vendôme broadcast on France 2 the first female sauce maker, Jeanne Vasseur, works.
Official website of theritz hotel.
Related Articles:
César Ritz
Auguste Escoffier
Palace
See as well Ritzy et Putting on the ritz under Mouth slang.
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