Award: Most legendary
When César Ritz, alongside culinary legend Auguste Escoffier, opened his hotel on the Place Vendôme in 1898, he set out to create the finest hotel in the world. Not only did he succeed in redefining what a hotel could be, complete with the radically novel features for the era—electricity on every floor! private bathrooms!—but it also holds true more than a century later. The now-mythical cast of characters includes Proust, Coco Chanel, who made the hotel her primary home for 30 years and has a suite named in her honor, and Ernest Hemingway, who inspired not only one of the world’s most recognizable cocktail bars but a commemorative suite, too. Today, it’s Hollywood and small-screen A-listers who pass through the Ritz’s revolving front door year-round and into one of 142 rooms and suites dressed up in creams, blush pinks, and soft blues, with Louis XV furnishings, brocade textiles, pastoral paintings, and golden swan-shaped faucets and bathtub taps. Guests have ample choice for drinking and dining, from the one-Michelin-starred contemporary restaurant Espadon run by Eugénie Béziat, the Bar Vendôme (which never has a quiet night, especially with live thematic music dinners on Wednesdays), the Salon Proust for tea time, and the Ritz Bar—helpful when the Hemingway is, invariably, packed to the gills.
Best amenity: The Ritz Club and Spa, a private member’s fitness and wellness club also open to hotel guests, including a 52-foot pool (beneath a painted sky), a David Mallett hair salon, and a new partnership with La Prairie, which adds seven facial treatments, including two for men, a signature treatment, and an exfoliating treatment, to the pampering options.
Can’t-miss experience: Guests can arrange a day with the head chef of the École Ritz Escoffier, the hotel’s prestigious, on-site cooking school, beginning with a market tour before returning to the property for a hands-on cooking class.
From $2,400