Hotel Ritz Paris
Paris
from Travel Intelligence

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"Superb jewel-like Paris classic"

Address:	15 Place Vendôme, 75001 Paris, France
Telephone:	+33-1 43-16-30-30
Fax:	+33-1 43-16-36-68
Cost:	from 610 euros
Rooms:	175

The Hotel Writes

"A unique address, among the world's most prestigious. Discover the comfort, elegance and superb refinement of the French art de vivre. Its unique charm and the distinction of its guests have made the Ritz a mythical hotel. The Ritz lives up to all the demands of modern life while preserving the charm of the past."

Reviews

Jamie Dunford Wood:

Why stay anywhere else? Certainly when the English think of Paris it is the Ritz that first springs to mind, forever associated in their minds with stuffed envelopes, British cabinet ministers and, tragically, the Princess of Wales. However, the hotel is, truly, peerless.

For a start the square, the Vendome, is perhaps one of the prettiest in Paris, it's only trouble being it has become something of a thoroughfare for the tourist buses en route from the Louvre to the Opera. Then there are the irritating men in buttoned-up grey suits who hang around just inside the entrance, beadily scanning footwear for the telltale sign of an American tourist, whispering, one supposes, into earpieces. Before you, a magnificent receding perspective of drapes and columns leads past a discreet staircase on the right (up here for the loos, you non-residents, but for goodness sake don't look back), while to the left is that epitome of the Paris hotel bar, where Hemingway spent so much time: small, intimate, dark and discreet. Unlike most hotel mottos dreamt up by marketing departments, the Ritz's seems apt: 'Luxury, Discretion, Perfection.'

Upstairs, maids and bellboys pad past you on thick blue carpets with murmured greetings, the walls hung with tapestry panels. The style of the 175 rooms (bar 4 more modern ones) is french country house, a blend of Rococo and French empire. Comfortable, plush, cosy, full of antiques, and with a feeling that you can feel entirely at home here, with deep armchairs and tall windows. Colours are deep and pale blues, pale yellows and golds, with rich carpeting patterned around the edge. Pretty ladies on swings adorn the prints on the walls, along with the odd oil painting, one rather disturbingly signed Monet and obviously a copy - one wonders whether this is supposed to fool anybody, and indeed whether it does.

Five floors are squeezed into the hotel on the garden side, four on the Vendome side, so ceilings are highest there, but still, everywhere they are generous, and the rooms, while not overly large, feel spacious because of the size of the windows while retaining a cosiness in the way they are done up. Bathrooms are in creamy marble, modern to just the right degree. Suites are on the first floor. Service, of course, is of a generally high standard, with prices to match.

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