5Whenever the rich and famous are in Paris, they head for the city's most beautiful square, the Place Vendome, originally conceived by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, First Architect to the Sun King Louis XIV, as a tribute to the monarch. In this delightful volume, Alexis Gregory traces the wonderfully rich and varied tapestry of the Place Vendome, from the square's beginnings as a high-risk property speculation, to its life in the twentieth century as Paris's center of fashion, jewelry, high finance, and art, a playground for international society that converges at the Ritz, one of the most elegant and renowned hotels in the world, recently redesigned by Thierry Despont. The cast of extraordinary personalities who have left their mark on the square covers the spectrum from designers Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli to financiers J. P. Morgan and John Law, and every prominent name in art and high society--the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Vanderbilts, the Rothschilds, plus Russian grand dukes, Indian maharajas, and celebrities from Lillie Langtry to Ernest Hemingway, lending the Place Vendome an ineffable aura. This luxuriously illustrated and evocatively written book will be cherished by sybarites, francophiles, and fashionistas of every persuasion.