The Ritz Paris – inside the legendary hotel on Place Vendôme

Coco Chanel lived here for more than 30 years. Hemingway had a bar named after him before he’d even finished drinking there. Proust wrote by candlelight in a suite that still bears his name. The Ritz Paris isn’t just an old hotel with a famous address – it’s the building half the 20th century’s most interesting people treated as a second home, and it’s been doing that since 1898.

Here’s what a stay actually covers – the Superior Room, afternoon tea at Salon Proust, the Ritz Club’s pool and spa, dinner, and what’s within walking distance of Place Vendôme.

So what actually is this place?

The Ritz Paris opened on June 1, 1898, at 15 Place Vendôme, founded by César Ritz and built into a former 18th-century townhouse in the heart of the 1st arrondissement. It’s been renovated twice – once between 1980 and 1987, and again in a major four-year closure between 2012 and 2016 that touched nearly every corner of the building without erasing its Belle Époque bones. Today it runs 142 rooms and suites, many of them named after the historic guests who stayed in them.

• 🏛️ Opened in 1898, one of the most historically significant hotels in the world
• 🛏️ 142 rooms and suites, several bearing the names of famous former guests
• 🍽️ Five distinct dining and bar venues, including the Michelin-recognized Espadon
• 🏊 A full Ritz Club & Spa with pool, gym and treatment rooms
• 📍 On Place Vendôme, steps from the Tuileries, the Louvre and the Opéra Garnier
• 👗 Home for over 30 years to Coco Chanel, who lived in a suite across from her own boutique

The Superior Room

At 35 square meters, the Superior Room is the Ritz Paris’s entry-level category, and even at that size it doesn’t feel like a compromise – marble bathroom, generously proportioned for a room at this tier, and finished with the same French antique furnishings, silk fabrics and gilded detailing running through the rest of the hotel. It’s less about square footage and more about being inside a building where every surface has a story, whether or not the room itself carries a name.

Beyond the Superior Room

The Ritz Paris runs an unusually deep room and suite hierarchy, from the Executive Room (40 sqm) and Deluxe Room (45 sqm) up through Grand Deluxe, Deluxe Suite and Deluxe Junior Suite categories, before reaching the hotel’s famous Prestige Suites – each one named after and decorated in tribute to a historic guest. The Suite Coco Chanel runs 188 square meters with a Vendôme Square view and two bedrooms; the Suite Ernest Hemingway offers a Grand Jardin view and a spinning terrace; the Suite Chopin has a painted ceiling that’s a listed historic monument in its own right; and the Suite Impériale, at 218 square meters with its own private dining room and kitchen, is also protected as a French historic monument. Booking a named suite is booking a piece of the hotel’s actual history rather than just a larger room.

Nightly rates

The Superior Room runs around €2,272 per night (about $2,635 USD), which includes a €72 breakfast. Rates climb sharply through the room hierarchy toward the named Prestige Suites, which command a significant premium given their size, history and, in several cases, listed-monument status.

Afternoon tea at Salon Proust

Named for Marcel Proust, who wrote much of his work while staying at the hotel, the Salon Proust runs a classic French-style afternoon tea in a room built around fine wood paneling and antique books – the kind of space designed to feel timeless rather than trend-driven. It’s one of the Ritz Paris’s signature daytime experiences, and a genuinely different mood from the hotel’s evening bars.

Dinner, drinks and dining across the hotel

The Ritz Paris runs five distinct venues, each with a different rhythm through the day.

🍽️ Espadon

The hotel’s gastronomic restaurant, led by chef Eugénie Béziat, set beside the Ritz’s tree-lined terrace. This is fine dining built around a genuinely subtle take on luxury rather than spectacle – the destination dinner reservation on-property.

🥐 Bar Vendôme

An all-day brasserie set beneath a grand Belle Époque glass roof, covering breakfast, lunch and dinner with reinterpreted French classics. Live music runs every Wednesday evening as part of the hotel’s “Live at the Ritz” series.

🍸 Bar Hemingway

The legendary, more intimate of the hotel’s two cocktail bars, open evenings only, with a smart dress code and tailor-made cocktails as the house specialty. Reservations aren’t accepted – it runs first-come, first-served.

🍹 Ritz Bar

A more contemporary counterpart to Bar Hemingway, with a star-studded ceiling and a cocktail program inspired by biodynamics and astral signs – stylish rather than nostalgic, and the pick for a livelier evening.

🍰 Ritz Paris Le Comptoir

The hotel’s dedicated patisserie and tea room on Rue Cambon, run by chef François Perret, serving pastries, madeleines and viennoiseries either to sit in or take away.

The Ritz Club & Spa

Beneath the hotel, the Ritz Club & Spa runs a full wellness program built around its signature swimming pool, alongside a fitness area and dedicated treatment rooms. It’s a genuinely complete spa offering rather than a token hotel gym-and-sauna combination, and one of the more talked-about amenities among returning Ritz Paris guests.

Sightseeing within walking distance

Place Vendôme puts the Ritz Paris within easy walking range of some of the city’s biggest draws – the Tuileries Garden and the Louvre a short walk one direction, the Opéra Garnier and the high-end shopping of Rue Saint-Honoré in the other. Few luxury hotels in Paris offer this level of central access without needing a taxi or metro ride for a first stop of the day.

Best time to visit

Spring (April-June) and early autumn (September-October) bring Paris’s most comfortable weather without the peak-summer crowds around the Louvre and Tuileries. Winter, particularly around the December holidays, gives Place Vendôme its full festive dressing and pairs well with the Ritz’s own more intimate, fireplace-and-candlelight character – a genuinely different mood from a summer stay.

Frequently asked questions

📹 Video by ST Travel