The Ritz Paris: A History Worth Knowing

The address is 15 Place Vendôme. The hotel opened on June 1, 1898. In the 128 years since, it has been the site of some of the most consequential, romantic, scandalous, and tragic moments in modern history. No hotel on earth has accumulated a narrative like the Ritz Paris. What follows is an attempt to tell it straight.

 

César Ritz: The Man Who Invented Luxury Hospitality

César Ritz was born in 1850, the youngest of thirteen children, in the Swiss village of Niederwald. His family were poor farmers. He began his career at fifteen as a sommelier's apprentice in a Brig hotel. What followed was one of the most extraordinary climbs in the history of hospitality — by the 1880s, he was managing the most prestigious hotels in Europe and had been referred to by King Edward VII as "the hotelier of kings, and the king of hoteliers."

In 1898, backed by Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle (the creator of Grand Marnier) and in partnership with culinary genius Auguste Escoffier, Ritz purchased and converted an 18th-century mansion at 15 Place Vendôme. It opened on June 1, 1898 to what Madame Ritz described as "a glittering reception." The guest list included Marcel Proust, Grand Duke Michael of Russia with his companion the Comtesse Torby, and seemingly every socialite in Paris who knew what was coming.

The Ritz was immediately revolutionary. It was the first hotel in Europe to put electricity on every floor and provide private en suite bathrooms in every room — innovations so radical at the time that they defined the category of "luxury hotel" as we still understand it. César also coined the phrase "the customer is always right." He invented, quite literally, the modern standard of hotel service.

The word "ritzy" — meaning extravagantly glamorous — entered the English language directly because of what his hotels represented. F. Scott Fitzgerald titled a short story "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." That's how thoroughly the name had lodged itself in the cultural imagination within a generation of the hotel's opening.

César Ritz suffered a severe nervous breakdown in 1902, four years after the opening, and never fully recovered. He died in 1918, having spent his final sixteen years unable to actively manage the institution he built. His wife Marie kept the hotel running. His son Charles took over after the war.

The Literary Regulars: Proust, Hemingway, and the Lost Generation

The Ritz's guest list in its first four decades reads like a syllabus for a course in 20th-century literature and culture. Marcel Proust was at the opening in 1898, aged 27. He returned for the rest of his life — coming late at night to dine alone in a private room, befriending the maître d'hôtel Olivier Dabescat, who fed him society gossip that found its way into In Search of Lost Time. He wrote of the Ritz: "At the Ritz, nobody hurries you along." In his final months in 1922, when he was too ill to leave his cork-lined bedroom, meals were sent to him from the Ritz kitchen. On his deathbed, he requested only cold beer — from the Ritz. It arrived too late.

Ernest Hemingway made the Ritz Bar his Paris home base during the 1920s. He wrote: "When in Paris, the only reason not to stay at the Ritz is if you can't afford it." The bar's head bartender, Frank Meier — a quiet, multilingual man who became the most celebrated barman in Paris — served Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the entire Lost Generation across the zinc counter of what was then called the Petit Bar, near the Rue Cambon entrance. Cole Porter requested grand pianos at all hours. Zelda Fitzgerald drank at a pace that alarmed even Hemingway. Picasso sketched in the corner. It was not merely a bar but the living room of an era.

Frank Meier was also, it would later emerge, a member of the French Resistance. During the German occupation, while serving champagne to Nazi officers from behind his bar, he was simultaneously hiding Allied pilots, Jewish fugitives, and Resistance members in the hotel's back corridors. His was among the most remarkable double lives in the history of the city.

Then came liberation. On August 25, 1944, as Allied forces entered Paris, Hemingway — who had been operating as a self-appointed war correspondent attached to the 4th Infantry Division — assembled a small, ramshackle unit of soldiers and journalists and announced that he was going to "liberate" the Ritz. The hotel, as it turned out, had already been quietly vacated by the Germans and a contingent of British soldiers had arrived an hour before him. Hemingway was unfazed. He marched his group through the doors, made his way to his old bar, and ordered the bartender to produce the Montgomery Martini: 17 parts gin to one part vermouth (the same ratio as British Field Marshal Montgomery's preferred odds of 17 to 1 when facing the enemy). The group reportedly drank 51 of them collectively, a number that legend eventually attributed to Hemingway alone. In 1994, the bar was officially renamed Bar Hemingway in his honor.

 

Coco Chanel: Thirty-Four Years at 15 Place Vendôme

Coco Chanel moved into a suite at the Ritz in 1934 — conveniently located across the street from her couture house on Rue Cambon. She stayed for the rest of her active life, 34 years in total, until her death in 1971. The suite she furnished herself in her signature palette of black and white still bears her name.

The occupation years are the most complicated chapter of Chanel's long relationship with the hotel. When the Luftwaffe requisitioned the Ritz in summer 1940 and Hermann Göring took the Imperial Suite, most French civilians were permitted to remain in the smaller rooms near Rue Cambon. Chanel stayed — and became romantically involved with Hans Günther von Dincklage, a German diplomat and Abwehr intelligence officer who moved into her suite.

The relationship allowed her to maintain a privileged lifestyle throughout the occupation. But it went further than cohabitation. French intelligence files later revealed that Chanel had been recruited as Abwehr agent F-7124, with the code name "Westminster" — a nod to her earlier relationship with the Duke of Westminster. In 1941, she traveled to Madrid on a mission to recruit British contacts for German intelligence. In late 1943, she was recruited for Operation Modellhut — a scheme sanctioned by Heinrich Himmler in which Chanel was to use her friendship with Winston Churchill to open a back channel for a separate peace between Germany and Britain. The operation failed. Churchill, it appears, was not interested.

In September 1944, armed men from the French Forces of the Interior arrived at the Ritz and took Chanel for interrogation. She was released the same day. She later told her niece: "Churchill had me released." Most historians believe Churchill feared that a trial of Chanel would expose not only her Nazi connections but those of several senior British figures — including members of the royal family sympathetic to Germany — who had been part of her social circle before the war. Within hours of her release, Chanel drove to Lausanne, Switzerland, where she lived in exile until 1954. Von Dincklage joined her there. She continued to financially support him for years after the war.

Hermann Göring and the Occupation: A Hotel in Two Worlds

For four years, the Ritz operated as a hotel in two parallel realities. The German officers — Göring in the Imperial Suite, other Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht commanders in the grand rooms — occupied one half of the building with their confiscated art, their wine cellar raids, and their 90% discount bills sent to the Vichy government in lieu of payment. The French civilian residents — Chanel, and others who could afford or negotiate to stay — occupied the other half, separated by a corridor of deliberate unawareness.

Göring's use of the Imperial Suite was characterised by a particular grotesquerie: he filled it with jewellery and artwork confiscated from Rothschild family holdings and other Jewish collections across Paris. He is reported to have tried on pearl necklaces before the hotel mirrors. He ate foie gras and drank the hotel's finest Champagne at a time when the city's ordinary residents were rationing food.

The hotel staff navigated this impossible situation by maintaining a studied neutrality. They served everyone. They reported nothing. Several, like Frank Meier, went considerably further in their resistance. Madame Ritz — who had made the decision to keep the hotel open in 1940 rather than risk losing it by closing — later reflected on the moral complexity of that choice without resolution. It is still debated.

Princess Diana: The Imperial Suite, August 30, 1997

By 1979, the Ritz had been purchased by Mohamed Al-Fayed, the Egyptian businessman who would run it for decades. His son Dodi Al-Fayed was romantically involved with Princess Diana in the summer of 1997.

On August 30, 1997, Diana and Dodi arrived at the Ritz Paris in the mid-afternoon, entering through the back door to avoid photographers gathered at Place Vendôme. They were shown to the Imperial Suite — the same rooms where Göring had kept his confiscated jewellery fifty years earlier. The paparazzi, having tracked them from Le Bourget Airport, made an early dinner reservation at a nearby restaurant impossible. The couple returned to the Ritz and ate their final meal in the suite: a mushroom and asparagus omelet, Dover sole, and vegetable tempura.

At 12:20am on August 31, Diana and Dodi left the Ritz through the rear entrance on Rue Cambon and got into a black Mercedes S280, driven by Henri Paul, the hotel's head of security who had been called back on duty that evening. Paul's blood-alcohol level was later found to be three times the French legal limit. At 12:23am, the car crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. Dodi Al-Fayed and Henri Paul died at the scene. Diana died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital at 4am. She was 36.

The Ritz Paris closed for a four-year renovation in 2012 and reopened in 2016. The Imperial Suite — scene of Göring's occupation, Diana's last dinner, and countless other chapters in the hotel's history — remains one of the most requested suites in Europe.

 

Other Voices, Other Rooms

The names that passed through 15 Place Vendôme across the 20th century constitute something close to a catalogue of modern celebrity and power. A partial list: King Edward VII, who had oversized bathtubs installed after getting stuck in a standard one with a companion and requiring rescue by hotel valets. The Marquise Luisa Casati, who kept two cheetahs in her suite and a drugged python around her neck, and died $25 million in debt. Cole Porter, who requested grand pianos at all hours and never paid for them. Elsa Maxwell, the professional hostess, who ordered dinner for 200 guests at two in the afternoon for eight that evening. George Bernard Shaw. Somerset Maugham. Graham Greene. Audrey Hepburn. Maria Callas. Sophia Loren, who called it "the most romantic hotel in the world." The Duke and Duchess of Windsor — Edward VIII, who had abdicated the British throne, and Wallis Simpson, both of whose sympathies toward Nazi Germany were known to the highest levels of the British government and constituted, quietly, one of the occupation era's most uncomfortable subplots. They were regular Ritz guests throughout.

The Proust Suite, the Hemingway Suite, and the Coco Chanel Suite all exist today, each carrying the aesthetic signature of their namesake. A suite named for Frédéric Chopin, another for Marcel Proust's great friend the Countess Greffuhle. Bar Hemingway is still the best cocktail bar in Paris by most serious assessments, still run by a head bartender — currently Colin Field — who treats it as a personal vocation rather than a job.

What You Actually Want to Know

When did the Ritz Paris open?

June 1, 1898, founded by Swiss hotelier César Ritz in partnership with chef Auguste Escoffier. The building at 15 Place Vendôme had previously been an 18th-century private mansion and later a bank. The opening party was attended by Marcel Proust and most of Paris society.

What happened at the Ritz Paris during World War II?

The Luftwaffe requisitioned the hotel in summer 1940. Hermann Göring occupied the Imperial Suite throughout the occupation, filling it with art and jewellery confiscated from Jewish collections. French civilians, including Coco Chanel, were permitted to remain in the Rue Cambon wing. Head bartender Frank Meier simultaneously served German officers and ran Resistance operations from the hotel. Ernest Hemingway "liberated" the bar on August 25, 1944.

Did Coco Chanel really collaborate with the Nazis at the Ritz?

The historical evidence is substantial. Chanel lived at the Ritz with Hans Günther von Dincklage, an Abwehr intelligence officer, throughout the occupation. French intelligence files identified her as Abwehr agent F-7124, code name "Westminster." She participated in Operation Modellhut, a German intelligence scheme targeting Winston Churchill. She was arrested in September 1944 and released the same day, widely believed due to Churchill's intervention. She fled to Switzerland and lived in exile until 1954.

What happened with Princess Diana at the Ritz Paris?

On August 30, 1997, Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed checked into the Imperial Suite at the Ritz Paris. They ate their final meal there. At 12:20am on August 31, they left through the rear entrance and were driven by Henri Paul — whose blood-alcohol level was later found to be three times the legal limit — into the Pont de l'Alma tunnel, where the car crashed. Diana died at 4am. She was 36.

Is the Ritz Paris worth staying at today?

It reopened in 2016 after a four-year renovation and operates at the highest level of any hotel in Paris. The Bar Hemingway alone justifies a visit regardless of whether you're staying. The Coco Chanel, Proust, and Hemingway suites are among the most historically resonant hotel rooms in the world. If you want the full Ritz experience — suite, dinner at L'Espadon, the full history in context — a Noon advisor can help you navigate the booking and brief you on what's actually worth your time there.

The difference between a good Paris trip and a great one usually comes down to a single conversation before you book. That's what Noon is for.

By Noon Travel Editors | May 12, 2026