As he gazed upon the imposing carriages and the crowd of guests thronging to the opening of his hotel on June 1st, 1898, César Ritz realised how far he had come from the mountains of his birthplace in Switzerland's Haut Valais. Marcel Proust standing alongside the Princess Murat, Grand Duke Michael of Russia chatting to the Aga Khan…The "ideal waiter" of the Voisin restaurant, as he was hailed by the Goncourts in their Journal, was a fast learner. His models would be taken from the palaces of old Europe. He followed high society in its annual progress, from Monaco to Gstaad, from Rome to Baden-Baden, until high society, falling under his spell, began to follow him instead. Ritz tirelessly invented one party after another, each finer than the last. Only he could set Lake Lucerne ablaze with fifty sailing ships resplendent with Bengal fire, only he could transform a restaurant in Baden-Baden into a tropical garden. At the summit of his art, he launched the fashion for afternoon tea and for dining out. Paris society – which had up until then rarely ventured outside its own mansions – now invited its guests to dine at the hotel, and society dandy Boni de Castellane dismissed his chef for his inability to match the standards of Auguste Escoffier. César Ritz aimed high: as manager of the most famous luxury hotels of the day (the Grand Hotel in Rome, the Savoy in London), he dreamed of the "ideal hotel", where the rich and famous of the day would feel at home. For his own hotel he would choose the finest of all, ordering every detail with maestria: decoration, comfort, innovations… and, above all, service.He contributed not just to the creation of a hotel, but to the emergence of a style, an art de vivre, whose secret the Ritz has lovingly preserved from day to day. Definitively ritzy!
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