The renovated Ritz Paris is still the Ritz

A $650m renovation has made the Ritz Paris hotel heaven without changing any of the fundamentals that matter most.

The entrance on the place vendôme in paris’s 1st arrondissement.

You can tell a lot about a hotel by your experience of leaving it. Making a guest feel welcome on arrival is comparatively easy, but making the departure experience a memorable one is no mean feat.

For starters it needs to be painless. At the newly reopened Ritz Paris, check-out and check-in times are flexible. If your flight isn’t until the evening, then you can stay in your hotel room until you’re ready to leave for the airport. Don’t want to pack your bags? A packing expert can do that for you. If you’re leaving Paris via Eurostar the hotel can arrange for transportation to Gare du Nord – you’ll arrive at an underground entrance to the train station and be met by a Ritz Paris porter who will escort you through the station and put your bags on the train for you. You can go from your hotel room in Paris all the way to London without even touching your luggage.

This kind of service extends the guest’s experience of Ritz Paris hospitality for as long as possible. Even the experience of settling the not-so-small matter of the bill is miraculously made as pleasant as possible. A mezzanine above the reception area has been removed to let in more light, create a 5m-high ceiling and offer guests checking out a fairytale view of the Place Vendôme. In short: this is hotel heaven.

The garden connecting the two buildings.

After a four-year and €450 million ($650m) renovation the Ritz Paris is back bigger, brighter and better than ever. It has been overhauled from top to bottom, yet in many ways it remains unchanged from the original concept Swiss hotelier César Ritz had when he opened the hotel in 1898. When Ritz bought the property – first built as a private residence in the early 18th century on Place Vendôme and then added to with an adjoining building on rue Cambon – he is said to have declared that the hotel he would open on the site would have “all the refinement that a prince could desire in his own home”. Over the years the Ritz attracted royalty of every kind, from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to writers such as Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway to composers such as Chopin and Cole Porter. Coco Chanel lived at the hotel from 1937 until her death in 1971. Princess Diana spent her last days there and Anna Wintour calls it home when she is in Paris.

After the death of Charles Ritz in 1976, César’s eldest son, the hotel started a period of slow decline until it was bought by the Egyptian billionaire Mohamed al-Fayed in 1979 for a reported $US20 million. Al-Fayed, still the hotel’s sole owner, undertook some refurbishments in the 1980s, but it was nothing like the overhaul the hotel has just undergone. In 1985 two basement levels were excavated and a swimming pool and the Ritz Club fitness centre were installed. Under the recent renovation the world’s first Chanel spa, Chanel au Ritz Paris, has been added to the underground area as well as a ballroom for 400 guests, a third kitchen for the École Ritz Escoffier and an underground entrance for those guests who want to come and go in privacy.

As well as the many newly constructed elements, not a single part of the old Ritz has been left untouched in this renovation, meaning the hotel had to close in 2012 for the first time in its history. The number of guest rooms has been reduced from 159 to 142 to create more space – all bathrooms, for example, now have a separate shower and bath – and 71 of the rooms are classed as suites. The smallest room size is 35sq m and the biggest, the Suite Impériale, is 218sq m. A planned 2015 opening was postponed to earlier this year and then a fire in January gutted the seventh floor of the rue Cambon section of the building, further delaying the opening. At present only 90 rooms are available to book, thanks to the fire, with the remaining rooms due to open in the northern spring.

The main staircase.

The task of transforming the Ritz Paris was given to the French-born, New York-based architect Thierry Despont who, among other things, was also responsible for renovations at Claridge’s hotel in London and The Carlyle in New York. Before the renovation was unveiled the hotel’s general manager, Christian Boyens, told WISH “The Ritz will stay The Ritz. When you come here you will feel at home. It’s no longer called the Hotel Ritz but the Ritz Paris so it should be more of a private mansion than a commercialised hotel.”

The 218sqm Suite Impériale.

Boyens says he was asked by regular guests if he would be installing touchscreen controls in the rooms, and his answer was always an emphatic no. “It’s just not us,” he says. In fact, the rooms are decidedly low-tech. There is approximately 2km of cabling hidden in each room, but lights can still be controlled by a wall switch that resembles an antique key (lighting and heating can also be controlled by a panel on the telephone). The crystal taps and gold swan faucets have been reinstated, as have the hotel’s signature peach-coloured towels and bathrobes (a colour that César Ritz thought best flattered the complexion). About 80 per cent of the original furnishings and 95 per cent of light fittings were restored and reinstated in the new hotel. Flatscreen televisions have been incorporated into the guest rooms and hidden behind antique mirrors. Even the design of the hand-painted porcelain service that the Ritz has used since it opened has been kept.

The lobby.

The attention to detail in the interiors is meticulous, to say the least. The traditional royal blue and gold-themed 18th-century French décor in the public areas remains but it is now lighter and fresher. When it came to choosing the paint colours for the hotel, the Ritz worked with the painter/decorator Pierre Finkelstein to create more than 70 new colours – which have since been copyrighted, meaning the Ritz Paris has a colour scheme all to itself. The wardrobe drawers are lined in leather, bathrooms have heated floors and each shower has three heads in different positions to suit a guest’s preference. There are 13 prestige suites that have been individually decorated, several of them named after and inspired by a famous former guest such as Chanel, Chopin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charlie Chaplin, Maria Callas and the Windsors. One suite, the Mansart, has a rooftop terrace with a 360-degree view over Paris.

As well as bring the basics into the modern era with better water pressure, integrated air conditioning and kilometres of cabling, the renovation has added new public areas. A secluded 1600sq m garden lined with linden trees now connects the Place Vendôme and rue Cambon buildings; an outdoor dining area with a retractable glass roof and heated floor links the Bar Vendôme with L’Espadon restaurant. The École Ritz Escoffier has expanded and now teaches professional chefs, amateurs and tourists alike the art of French cuisine. The Salon Proust is a small oak-lined lounge where guests can have afternoon tea, and the new Ritz Bar just inside the rue Cambon entrance is the perfect spot for a drink or small bite and is open until 2am.

Afternoon tea in the Salon Proust.

It’s also conveniently located to take the overflow from the nearby Bar Hemingway. This jewel box-sized bar was named after the writer in 1994 and has been overseen by head bartender Colin Field since it opened. Cole Porter is said to have composed Begin the Beguine in the bar; Fitzgerald had his favourite seat; and, of course, Hemingway made it the epicentre of his life in Paris. The bar is an homage to all things Ernest and is decorated with photos and memorabilia of the author.

The Ritz is almost a sacred site for some of its loyal customers, and while the hotel is keen to attract new ones it has been careful not to alienate its devotees. The Hemingway bar is a sacred site within a sacred site. The cosy room has been completely refurbished but looks more or less the same as it did before the renovation, just fresher. “Nothing has changed,” says Field. “The air conditioning is new and the lighting above the bar is different.” Some photographs have been placed in new frames but the wood panelling; the plaid curtains and the green leather upholstery are all as they were before the renovation. One thing that will never change, according to Field, is the music in the bar – there is none. The Ritz is still the Ritz.

The new Ritz bar.

The living room and bedroom.

SPA FOR THE HEART AND SOUL

Just as with Ernest Hemingway, who knocked back so many martinis at the Ritz bar that they named it after him, it’s impossible to walk into the Ritz without feeling the presence of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. The legendary couturier moved into her suite at the Ritz in 1937 and lived, loved and designed from there until her death in 1971. Today her spirit lives on in her rooms, restored to their stately glory, and in the world’s first Chanel spa, which boasts five cocoon-like treatment rooms, fitted out in the maison’s signature beige and black. Like Chanel, who had her talismans and adored astrology, the Chanel au Ritz Paris takes a holistic, almost spiritual approach to beauty, one that incorporates bien-être, or wellbeing. While Chanel started a beauty empire, she once said: “Beauty treatments should begin with the heart and the soul, otherwise, cosmetics are pointless.” For her, it began with self-awareness and self-confidence, and she had both in spades. With that in mind, a spa treatment at the Chanel spa is more about luxuriating in a quest for inner peace than having your pores examined, and the two-hour signature facial begins with a consultation that assesses your emotional needs as well as any physical concerns. Timed to carefully choreographed music and with luminotherapy (adjustments to the level of light), the treatment is designed to immerse the client into a complete sensory experience. Massage is at the core of the treatment, and the signature technique follows myofascial therapy, which sees the body and face lightly massaged in areas that focus on stress retention, promising – once you are also loaded with Chanel products – a lighter, happier you. I signed up for my treatment in the midst of Paris Fashion Week, my face an off-grey colour from too many long days and nights in front of my screen. Although my mind was racing, I drifted off into a deep slumber while the therapist gently cleansed, plumped my skin with a massage and brought it back to life with a deep moisture mask. I emerged feeling refreshed, and my skin looked miraculously rejuvenated, ready for the rest of the week. Alice Cavanagh

The Ritz Paris is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World. To book: lhw.com/ritzparis; or [phone]. Qantas flies to London Heathrow daily from Sydney and Melbourne via Dubai; regular Eurostar services connect from Saint Pancras station to Gare du Nord in Paris. qantas.com