Ritz Paris

The Ritz Paris opened at 15 Place Vendôme on 1 June 1898, eight years before the London house and nine after César Ritz had begun managing the Savoy. He and Auguste Escoffier had bought the site — the Hôtel de Gramont of 1705 and the Hôtel Crozat of 1703 — the year before, while both were still employed in London. It was among the first hotels in Europe to hold an en-suite bathroom, electricity and a telephone in every room.

The house

Behind an eighteenth-century façade by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the interiors were rebuilt by Charles Mewès, who would later design the Ritz London with Arthur Davis. The proposition was technological before it was decorative: the private bathroom Ritz had installed in Rome in 1894 became standard here, with electric light and a telephone beside it.

Ritz registered his own name as a brand in 1908, and in 1911 Albert Keller formed the Ritz-Carlton Investing Company to franchise it in the United States. The hotel and the trademark separated early, which is why Ritz houses exist today under owners who have nothing to do with one another.

The Ritz family sold to Mohamed Al-Fayed and his brothers Ali and Salah in 1979 ⚑ reported at $20m in some accounts and $30m in others, followed by a restoration variously given as $50m and $250m and carried out without closing the doors. 2023 filings show turnover of €128.5m against €104.7m, pre-tax profit down from €27.2m to €2.4m, and 650 staff.

What distinguishes it

The bathroom, the light and the telephone arrived together. Among the first hotels in Europe to hold all three in every room. The technology was the argument; the gilding came after.

The brand left the building in 1908. Ritz registered the name, Keller franchised it in America in 1911, and the word has been licensed ever since. The Ritz Paris is the only house that is both the original and, today, unrelated to most of what carries the name.

The Cambon bar barred women for fifteen years. It opened in 1921 with the Cambon Dog House opposite, where women were made to wait. In 1936 the manager’s American wife staged a sit-in and the bar admitted them. This is the fifth house in the Library whose most consequential act was letting women through a door, after Florian, Greco, Ladurée and Ada Coleman’s American Bar.

Bar Hemingway is an entry in its own right. LHL-S-102 Bar Hemingway, Ritz Paris, under Colin Peter Field, named best bartender in the world by Forbes in 1997, 2001 and 2004. The bar is more famous than most hotels.

The owner’s record is part of the house’s record. ⚑ Mohamed Al-Fayed died on 30 August 2023. Since his death more than two hundred women have made allegations of rape and sexual abuse against him. The register carries this against the ownership line rather than omitting it: an owner of thirty-four years is part of a house’s history.

Signature rooms and dates

Competitive landscape

Editorial note — Opening date, the 1897 purchase of the Gramont and Crozat mansions, the Mewès interiors, the 1908 trademark registration, the 1911 Ritz-Carlton Investing Company, the 1921 Cambon bar and the 1936 sit-in, and the 1979 sale checked against Wikipedia, famoushotels.org and Sortiraparis; 2023 figures from company filings as reported. Verified August 2026. ⚑ A widely syndicated page asserts that Al-Fayed never owned the hotel and that it has always been Qatari and Marriott-operated; it is wrong on every point and was discarded under the two-source rule.