IN Place Vendôme, an 18th-century square rimmed with winking jewellery shops, pinned in the middle by a column topped with Napoleon in Roman dress, a doorman in a peaked cap greets the three of us by name. ‘Welcome to your home in Paris,’ he says, with warmth. ‘Welcome to the Ritz.’
The Ritz Paris (no relation to The Ritz London or the Ritz-Carlton hotel group) has occupied this plot since 1898, when César Ritz flung the doors open, promising every guest a personal telephone and a bathtub (). The conga line of the great and the good who wrapped themselves in peach-coloured bathrobes (‘the
