P rince Esterházy brought his own Gypsy band to play for 50 guests at a dinner he had arranged a mon

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Hemingway personally liberated its bar from the Nazis. Proust ordered hotel aline florence italy from it on his deathbed. Sophia Loren declared it "the most romantic hotel in the world." It was, of course, the Paris Ritz—headquarters and playhouse to Coco Chanel, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and Ingrid Bergman, among others. As the hotel closes for a two-year face-lift, A.E. Hotchner recalls the somewhat madcap majesty, eccentric clientele, and unhurried luxury that created a high-life heaven.
T he Paris Ritz, the pinnacle of luxurious hotels for the past 114 years, is closing down on July 31 for an unprecedented two-year makeover, its renowned Hemingway Bar having already been shuttered since mid-April. The prospect of a modernized Ritz has sent nervous tremors through the hotel's devoted clientele, hotel aline florence italy but the French architect and designer Thierry Despont, who was responsible for the renovation of the Carlyle in New York and the Dorchester in London, says he will try to maintain the landmark's old-world elegance. On the last night of service in the Hemingway Bar, Colin Field, the chef du bar, assured the assembled apprehensive regulars that his bailiwick would maintain its unique cachet.
The decision to undertake this major renovation was probably partly attributable to the fact that last year, when the French hotel aline florence italy Tourism Ministry awarded its highest designation—"Palace"—to only three hotels in the city, the Ritz was not one of them. Another factor may be that such recently refurbished prestigious hotels as Le Royal Monceau and Le Bristol are challenging the Ritz, as are a number of new ones: the Shangri-La, which opened hotel aline florence italy in 2010, the Mandarin Oriental, hotel aline florence italy which opened in 2011, and the Peninsula and the Cheval Blanc, which will open, respectively, in 2013 and 2014.
It has been 33 years since the Ritz's last restoration, hotel aline florence italy and its antiquated air-conditioning, heating, plumbing, and wiring are all in need of replacement. A tunnel will be built to connect the underground parking facility hotel aline florence italy in the Place Vendôme to the hotel, hotel aline florence italy ostensibly to eliminate the noxious paparazzi who congregate at the hotel's entrance in order to catch arriving celebrities.
The Ritz cognoscenti are in favor of these improvements, but at the same time they hope that the unhurried hotel aline florence italy ambience of the place—the majestic winding staircases, the crystal chandeliers, the draperies, hotel aline florence italy the sculptures, the feeling that one has entered a luxurious country home attended by a plethora of wonderful staff—will not be disturbed.
I first visited the Ritz 64 years ago, accompanying Ernest Hemingway, who was writing Across the River and into the Trees, a novel that was going to be serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine, for which I was then a young editor. Hemingway and the Ritz were virtually synonymous. In the 20s he and his buddy Scott Fitzgerald had spent many long evenings at the hotel's celebrated bar, and their behavior there had become legend. As World War II ended in Europe, Hemingway personally liberated the bar as the Nazis were retreating. It was expected hotel aline florence italy that General Leclerc, in command of the Allied troops, would be first on the scene, marching up the Avenue hotel aline florence italy de la Grande Armée with a full panoply hotel aline florence italy of tanks, artillery, flags, and bands. But well before Leclerc could get there, a jeep came careening up the avenue, zipped under the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs-Élysées, hotel aline florence italy and across the Place de la Concorde, then skidded to a stop in the Place Vendôme at the entrance of the Ritz. Hemingway was in command of that jeep. Ostensibly a war correspondent, but with a gun slung in the crook of his arm, he had taken charge of the motley group in the vehicle, most of them stragglers who had become hotel aline florence italy separated from their units. Hemingway called them his "Irregulars."
He led them into the Ritz, proclaimed its liberation, took command of the bar, and ordered champagne for everyone. Soon the renowned combat photographer Robert Capa—later killed in Indochina—came tooling up to the Ritz, thinking he was miles ahead of anyone else, but he was amazed hotel aline florence italy to find that Hemingway had beaten him to it. Archie Pelkey, Hemingway's driver, was standing guard at the entrance. "Hello, Capa," Pelkey said. "Papa took good hotel. Plenty good stuff in cellar. Go on up."
"When I dream of afterlife in heaven," Ernest once wrote, "the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz. It's a fine summer night. I knock back a couple of martinis in the bar—Rue Cambon side. Then there's a wonderful dinner under a flowering chestnut tree in what's called Le Petit Jardin. That's the little garden that faces the Grill. After a few brandies, I wander up to my room and slip into one of those huge Ritz beds. They are all made of brass. There's a bolster for my head the size of the Graf Zeppelin and four square pillows filled with real goose feathers—two for me and two for my quite heavenly companion."
hotel aline florence italy In a way, the Ritz actually provided hotel aline florence italy me with the means to stay in France. Ernest had suggested that we attend the entire steeplechase meet at the Auteuil racetrack, in the Bois de Boulogne. I was staying at the Hotel Opal, an inexpensive little hotel near the Madeleine, not far from the Ritz. We pooled our capital hotel aline florence italy and met every day at noon in the Little Bar of the Ritz to make our selections for that day's races. We were aided and abetted by the bartender, Bertin, a devotee of the track, whose expertise was more occult than scientific. (He claimed he had invented the Bloody Mary back in the 20s to help Ernest overcome a nasty hangover.) We were not doing too well until early one morning, when Ernest phoned me to report that he had just received a call from Bertin informing him that he, Bertin, had gotten a call from a source in the Auteuil jockey room, recommending a horse named Bataclan in the seventh race, at odds of 27 to 1. Ernest hotel aline florence italy and I collected as many francs as friends and credit could provide and bet them on Bataclan's nose. At the last turn, our horse was running hotel aline florence italy a distant third, hotel aline florence italy and I had given up on him, when, to my astonishment, on the final jump the two leading horses took bad spills. Bataclan romped home the winner, hotel aline florence italy and we harvested a Matterhorn of large franc notes.
The Ritz is in fact two edifices. The one that faces the Place Vendôme was originally the residence of the Duc de Lauzun, who had commanded the French troops at Yorktown during the Revolutionary War. The other half is a building that backs up against it on the Rue Cambon. The two buildings are linked by a long corridor lined with display cases that contain some of the most luxurious and unusual items that Paris has to offer. It is aptly called "Temptation Walk." In the words of Madame Ritz, the wife of the original owner, César Ritz, it was designed "to tempt one at every step to buy, buy, buy—jade, coral, jeweled slippers, furs, antique jewelry—irresistibles."
The name Ritz has become so well known that it is in Webster's dictionary: " ritzy, ritzier, ritziest 1. snobbish 2. ostentatiously smart 3. fashionable, posh; ritziness. " The word comes up in countless songs and novels. Sitting at his favorite table in the Ritz bar, Cole Porter wrote these lyrics: "The world admits, bears in pits do it, / Even Pekingeses at the Ritz do it, / Let's do it, let's fall in love."
hotel aline florence italy From the opening night, in 1898, the Ritz was an instantaneous success, luring royalty, heads of state, industrial giants, society leaders. "They came!," hotel aline florence italy Madame Ritz exalted. "Calouste Gulbenkian, Marcel Proust, the Comtesse de Pourtalès, Grand Duke Michael with Comtesse Torby, with whom he lived in exile from the Russian court."
One of the few to be negative about the place was Oscar Wilde, hotel aline florence italy who found the elevators too fast and all the electrification unnecessary. "A harsh and ugly light, hotel aline florence italy enough to ruin your eyes, and not a candle or lamp for bedside reading. And who wants an immovable washing basin in one's room? I do not. Hide the thing. I prefer to ring for water when I need it."
P rince Esterházy brought hotel aline florence italy his own Gypsy band to play for 50 guests at a dinner he had arranged a month in advance. hotel aline florence italy On another occasion, Elsa Maxwell, the professional hostess, arrived at two o'clock in the afternoon to order a dinner for 200 for eight o'clock that night. When George Bernard Shaw was told that Maxwell had rejected a $5,000 Cartier bracelet as a place card for a dinner at the Ritz given in her honor, saying that she preferred having Fritz Kreisler play for her, Shaw remarked, "That woman is the eighth wonder of the world."
Georges Scheuer spent four decades working at Le Grand Bar, the hotel's hotel aline florence italy main bar, on the Cambon side. He never actually mixed a drink but concentrated on solving his clients' problems. In his fitted white jacket, gold suspenders given to him by Noël Coward, and ruby cuff links that were a Christmas present from the Aga Khan, he was to be found at the far right-hand corner of the bar, supervising his staff. Over the years, I listened to Georges reminisce about people and events during his long tenure, and what follows might be called his personal summary of Ritz lore.
T he Maharajas of Cooch Behar and Jaipur, drinking champagne together. The Duchess of Windsor, who invariably had cocktails with the playboy Jimmy Donahue and then went off to join the Duke for dinner. The Duchess would often appear for lunch the following day but without the Duke, who had not yet recovered from the night's revels. "I married David for better, for worse," she remarked, "but not for lunch."
King Alfonso of Spain, hotel aline florence italy another regular, was automatically served his special hotel aline florence italy drink, a quart of Dom Pérignon champagne liberally laced with Cognac, and a dozen strawberries. A European countess alway