At 15 Place Vendôme, where Jules Hardouin-Mansart's seventeenth-century limestone facades enclose one of Paris's most formally composed squares, César Ritz opened his hotel in 1898 inside a pair of adjoining hôtels particuliers — and in doing so established the template against which every grand European hotel has since been measured. Following a four-year closure and a renovation overseen by interior designer Thierry Despont, the Ritz Paris reopened in 2016 with its 142 rooms and suites restored to a condition that honours the layered history of the building without freezing it. The exterior presents the same creamy Lutetian limestone and wrought-iron balconies visible in Hardouin-Mansart's original elevation; inside, gilded boiserie panels, Louis XVI medallion chairs upholstered in dusty rose velvet, and Baccarat crystal chandeliers continue the period vocabulary across the dining room's arched mirrors and silk-draped windows. Guest rooms split between two distinct registers: some suites, visible in the images, deploy pale celadon silks, carved white-painted panelling, and Savonnerie-style carpets in the full Ancien Régime manner; others — notably the Coco Chanel suite — shift toward a crisper ivory and champagne palette, with lacquered screens, shagreen-fronted commodes, and sunburst mirrors that bring a measured Art Deco restraint to the Rococo bones of the building. The Bar Hemingway, lined in warm oak panelling with tufted leather banquettes and taxidermy mounted above brass library lamps, pulls sharply against all of that gilded paleness — a deliberate counter-note, and entirely its own room.

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