Book The Ritz for the purer work of architecture: Mewès and Davis's Louis XVI interiors above London's first substantial steel frame, and a dining room holding two Michelin stars. Book The Savoy for the river, the bars and the wider choice of rooms and restaurants. The Ritz is a single statement; the Savoy is a city in miniature.
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Every comparison of these two hotels begins with a dismissal letter. In 1898 the Savoy's board removed its celebrated manager, César Ritz, together with his chef Auguste Escoffier, citing negligence and mismanagement. Eight years later Ritz opened a hotel of his own a mile west on Piccadilly and put his name over the door. London's two most famous grand hotels are therefore versions of one argument, separated by a generation of hotelkeeping and by two very different ideas of what a luxury building should be.
The Savoy is the older and larger machine. Richard D'Oyly Carte built it on the Strand with the profits of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, opening it on 6 August 1889 to designs by Thomas Edward Collcutt, and it has belonged to the Thames ever since: 267 rooms split between Edwardian decoration on the river side and Art Deco on the Strand side, restored between 2007 and 2010 at a cost that grew to £220 million. The Ritz, opened on 25 May 1906, is the tighter composition. Charles Mewès, architect of the Ritz Paris, working with his London partner Arthur Davis, drew a Beaux-Arts palace over the first substantial steel frame in London, engineered by Sven Bylander, with an arcade along Piccadilly modelled on the Rue de Rivoli and 136 rooms dressed in Louis XVI.
The honest split: the Ritz is the better-resolved building, one architectural idea carried from the arcade to the cornice, and since February 2025 it also holds the stronger kitchen, with two Michelin stars in the Ritz Restaurant. The Savoy answers with position and plurality: the river, three Gordon Ramsay restaurants, two of London's great bars and a broader spread of rooms. The full case for each follows.
| The Savoy | The Ritz London | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Thames views, the bars, breadth of dining | Design coherence, Palm Court tea, starred dining |
| Address | The Strand, above the Thames | Piccadilly, facing Green Park |
| Opened | 6 August 1889 | 25 May 1906 |
| Architects | Thomas Edward Collcutt | Charles Mewès and Arthur Davis |
| Rooms | 267, Edwardian and Art Deco | 136, Louis XVI throughout |
| Signature dining | Restaurant 1890, 1 Michelin star; Savoy Grill; River Restaurant | The Ritz Restaurant, 2 Michelin stars (2025) |
| Afternoon tea | Thames Foyer, under the glass cupola | Palm Court |
| Ownership | Kingdom Holding and Katara; managed by Fairmont | Independent; sold to a Qatari investor in 2020 |
| Rate tier | $$$$ | $$$$ |
Signature: The river. No London grand hotel owns its site the way the Savoy owns the Thames, and the building has organised itself around that fact since 1889; Monet painted Waterloo Bridge from its windows, and the river suites still sell the same sightline.
Collcutt's building is really two hotels wearing one name, and the 2007 to 2010 restoration, which closed the house for nearly three years and ended at £220 million after the façade needed stabilising, chose to sharpen that split rather than dissolve it. Rooms on the Thames side are Edwardian in dress; rooms on the Strand side are Art Deco. The public rooms hold the best of both: the American Bar came through the restoration nearly untouched, the Beaufort Bar was added in jet black and gold, and the Thames Foyer now takes its afternoon tea under a stained glass cupola that had been covered since the Second World War. Kaspar, Basil Ionides's 1926 black cat, still makes the fourteenth at tables of thirteen.
The house is mid-renewal again: a phased refurbishment of all 267 rooms and suites by design studio G.A Group began taking bookings in June 2025 and runs to 2027. The food offer is the widest in London's grand hotel class, all of it under Gordon Ramsay: the Savoy Grill off the Strand, the seafood-led River Restaurant on the Thames side, and Restaurant 1890, the small tasting-menu room named for the year Escoffier arrived, which holds one Michelin star, retained in the 2026 guide.
Honest trade-off: Plurality is also the weakness. The Edwardian and Deco halves are each handsome, but the building never resolves into a single statement the way Piccadilly's does, and with the refurbishment running in phases until 2027, which generation of room you are given matters; ask. Strand-side rooms swap the river for traffic. And for all the breadth, the Savoy's starred cooking sits one star below the Ritz's peak.
Weighted: Service 25%, Design 20%, Romance / Value / Food 15% each, Location 10%. Scores are HotelsForKings editorial judgments, not guest review averages.
Signature: Coherence. The Ritz is the most complete Beaux-Arts interior in London, one Louis XVI idea carried without a false note from the Piccadilly arcade to the Palm Court, and the dining room beneath its painted ceiling now cooks at two-star level.
César Ritz brought in Charles Mewès, who had designed his Paris hotel, together with Mewès's London partner Arthur Davis, and it shows: the pair composed a French palace for an English street, the arcade quoting the Rue de Rivoli, the whole structure hung on Sven Bylander's steel frame, the first substantial one in London. Where the Savoy accumulated its character in layers, the Ritz arrived finished. The gallery running the length of the ground floor remains one of the great interior promenades in Europe, and the gilded Palm Court at its centre stages the most famous afternoon tea in the world. The best rooms face Green Park: tall windows, afternoon light, the park reading as a private garden.
The kitchen has caught up with the architecture. John Williams MBE, executive chef since 2004, won the hotel's first Michelin star in 2017 and its second in February 2025; his response, that he had waited fifty years for the moment, tells you how the house thinks about time. The same year the Ritz Restaurant was named Best Restaurant in the UK at the National Restaurant Awards. The Barclay family era ended in 2020, when the hotel was sold to a Qatari investor, and the change of hands altered nothing visible: the register stays Louis XVI, polished and absolute.
Honest trade-off: The purity is also the constraint. With 136 rooms the house sells out early and entry categories are scarce; the Louis XVI vocabulary is a fixed, formal register you either want or do not, and the hotel enforces the formality, including a dress code in the Restaurant and Palm Court. There is no river, no Deco counterpoint, and a thinner bar and restaurant bench than the Savoy's three-kitchen spread.
Weighted: Service 25%, Design 20%, Romance / Value / Food 15% each, Location 10%. Scores are HotelsForKings editorial judgments, not guest review averages.
Book The Ritz when the building is the point: one design idea held from the arcade to the cornice, tea in the Palm Court, and since February 2025 the stronger kitchen by a full star. As architecture, it is the design verdict, and it is not especially close.
Book The Savoy when the stay has more moving parts: a river suite, a martini at the American Bar, three restaurants without leaving the house, and a wider ladder of rooms while the 2027 refurbishment rolls through. In one line: the Ritz is a finished sentence; the Savoy is an anthology. The founding quarrel of 1898 turns out to be a fair division of labour.
They answer different briefs. The Ritz is the better-resolved building, a single Louis XVI statement by Mewès and Davis with two Michelin stars in its dining room since February 2025. The Savoy is the bigger, more varied machine: 267 rooms over the Thames, three Gordon Ramsay restaurants and two of London's great bars. Choose the Ritz for design and dining at its peak, the Savoy for the river and the range.
The Ritz, by the Michelin measure. The Ritz Restaurant was promoted to two stars in February 2025 under executive chef John Williams MBE, who has run the kitchen since 2004 and won the hotel's first star in 2017; it was also named Best Restaurant in the UK 2025 at the National Restaurant Awards. The Savoy answers with breadth: Restaurant 1890 by Gordon Ramsay holds one star, retained in the 2026 guide, alongside the Savoy Grill and the seafood-led River Restaurant.
The Ritz's Palm Court is the fuller ceremony: the gilded room, the formality, the most famous tea service in the world. The Savoy's Thames Foyer makes a different case, serving tea in a winter garden under the stained glass cupola that the 2010 restoration brought back into daylight after decades covered. Book the Ritz for the ritual, the Savoy for the lighter room.
He was dismissed. In 1898 the Savoy's board removed Ritz, then its celebrated manager, along with chef Auguste Escoffier, citing negligence and mismanagement. Eight years later, in May 1906, Ritz opened his own hotel on Piccadilly, designed by Charles Mewès, the architect of his Paris house, with Arthur Davis. The two hotels have been rival readings of luxury ever since.
For views, the Savoy: its river-facing suites look over the Thames that Monet painted from the hotel's windows, and no Ritz room can match that. For consistency, the Ritz: 136 rooms in one sustained Louis XVI register, facing Piccadilly or Green Park. Note that the Savoy is refurbishing its 267 rooms in phases through 2027, with the first new rooms bookable since June 2025, so which generation of room you are given matters.
The Savoy is owned by Kingdom Holding and Katara Hospitality and managed by Fairmont. The Ritz London is independently held; the Barclay family sold it to a Qatari investor in 2020. Despite the shared name, the Ritz London, the Ritz Paris and the Ritz-Carlton chain are separate businesses, which is why the Piccadilly hotel feels like nobody's flagship but its own.
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