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The Ritz, London is a Grade II listed 5-star hotel located in Piccadilly in London, England. A symbol of high society and luxury, the hotel is one of the world's most prestigious and best known hotels. It is a member of the international consortium, The Leading Hotels of the World. The hotel was opened by Swiss hotelier César Ritz in May 1906, eight years after he established the Hôtel Ritz Paris. After a weak beginning, the hotel began to gain popularity towards the end of World War I, and became popular with politicians, socialites, writers and actors of the day in particular. David Lloyd George held a number of secret meetings at the Ritz during the latter half of the war, and it was at the Ritz that he made the decision to intervene on behalf of Greece against Turkey. Noël Coward was a notable diner at the Ritz in the 1920s and 1930s. Owned by the Bracewell-Smith family for a period until 1976, The Ellerman Group of Companies purchased the hotel for £80 million from Trafalgar House in October 1995. They spent eight years and £40 million restoring it to its former grandeur. In 2002, it became the first hotel to receive a Royal warrant from HRH the Prince of Wales for its banquet and catering services. The exterior is both structurally and visually Franco-American in style with little trace of English architecture, and is heavily influenced by the architectural traditions of Paris. The facade on the Piccadilly side is roughly , on the Arlington Street side, and on the Green Park side. At the corners of the pavilion roofs of the Ritz are large green copper lions, the emblem of the hotel. The Ritz has 111 rooms and 23 suites. The Ritz Club, owned by London Clubs since 1998, is a casino in the basement of the hotel, occupying the space which was formerly the Ritz Bar and Grill. It offers roulette, black jack, baccarat, and poker, as well as some slot machines. The interior was designed mainly by London and Paris based designers in the Louis XVI style, which is consistent throughout. Author Marcus Binney describes the great suite of ground-floor rooms as "one of the all-time masterpieces of hotel architecture" and compares it to a royal palace with its "grand vistas, lofty proportions and sparkling chandeliers". The Ritz's most widely known facility is the Palm Court, which hosts the famous "Tea at the Ritz". It is an opulently decorated cream-colored Louis XVI setting, with panelled mirrors in gilt bronze frames. The hotel has six private dining rooms, the Marie Antoinette Suite, with its ''boiserie'', and the rooms within the Grade II * listed William Kent House. The Rivoli Bar, built in the Art Deco style, was designed in 2001 by interior designer Tessa Kennedy, to resemble the bar on the Orient Express. ==History== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Ritz Hotel, London」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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