The Ritz London

The Ritz London is a luxury hotel at 150 Piccadilly in London, opened on 24 May 1906 by the Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz on the site of the former Old White Horse Cellar coaching inn, and its name gave rise to the English word ritzy for anything ostentatiously stylish. Architects Charles Mewes and Arthur Davis, both trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, designed the hotel in a neoclassical Louis XVI style with Norwegian granite at ground level and Portland stone above, crowned by green copper lions at the corners of its pavilion roof, and it was among the earliest substantial steel frame buildings in London. Its ground floor suite, including the celebrated Palm Court where afternoon tea at the Ritz became a London institution, has been called one of the finest examples of hotel architecture, and the hotel of 111 rooms and 25 suites has hosted politicians, royalty, and leading cultural figures throughout the twentieth century.