Ritz Paris

Coco Chanel lived here for 34 years — not in a suite, but in a modest set of rooms on the top floor overlooking Rue Cambon, from which she could walk directly to her atelier across the street. Marcel Proust was a regular in the dining room, Ernest Hemingway "liberated" the bar during the 1944 advance on Paris (the bar now bears his name), and Princess Diana dined here on the night of her death. César Ritz opened the hotel in 1898 with the ambition of creating "the perfect hotel," and after a four-year, €400 million restoration completed in 2016, his successors have clearly taken the mission seriously. 142 rooms on Place Vendôme, the École Ritz Escoffier cooking school, and two bars that between them account for a significant percentage of Paris's champagne consumption.