Society & Culture
Recently the Ritz, the most famous hotel in the world, reopened its doors after a $450 million renovation. Situated on Paris’ Place Vendôme, where dukes and princes used to live, the accommodation is no less palatial than any royal residence and those who are able to afford a room there (running as high as $25,000 a night) surely must feel like a king or a queen, which was the goal of the hotel’s founder, César Ritz. Ernest Hemingway was a regular guest who even took some of the credit for the hotel’s liberation during World War II (starting in the bar which these days bears his name). He once observed, “When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz.” And no wonder that when in 1934 Nabisco introduced a new cracker brushed with coconut oil to make it look rich that it named it Ritz. Just as the Ritz has become the most famous hotel in the world, the Ritz cracker has become arguably the most famous snack food in the world. (Nonetheless, even though