César Ritz opened his hotel on place Vendôme in 1898, with the idea that a guest should be able to take a bath in their own room. That was new at the time, and the rest of the industry followed.
Place Vendôme
Coco Chanel lived here for thirty-seven years and Hemingway left his name on a bar. After four years of work the hotel reopened in 2016 with its Proust gallery, its cooking school and a pool under a painted vault.
Arriving by car
The centre of place Vendôme is pedestrian and vehicle access is controlled at both entrances. Drop-off is right outside the hotel, briefly, and the valets take over; on high-security days access has to be requested in advance.
Photo: Arthur Weidmann / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0
Around the hotel
Place Vendôme opens on one side onto rue de la Paix and its jewellers, on the other onto rue Saint-Honoré. The Opéra Garnier is a few streets away, and so are the Tuileries — where the Fashion Week tents go up, which changes traffic in the whole district for a week, twice a year.
Our journeys from the Ritz
When the centre of the square is closed, we pick guests up at the rue de Castiglione entrance. Most journeys head for Roissy or Le Bourget, or stay in Paris for a day of meetings. The driver stays reachable and waits: nobody leaves a dinner in a hurry because the car is blocking the street.
