Luxury was invented by a farm kid.

Meet César Ritz.

César Ritz was born the 13th child in a broke farming family in the Swiss Alps—so, statistically, he should’ve ended up shoveling hay. Instead, he became the man who decided your hotel room needed a private bathroom, a telephone, and oh yeah—silk wallpaper and someone to fluff your pillow without making eye contact. The guy rewrote the guest experience.

He got his start working as a waiter in Paris, but Ritz had an eerie ability to read a room—literally and figuratively. He once removed an entire chandelier mid-service because he noticed it made guests look slightly yellow under the light. (Unflattering lighting? Not on his watch.)

Then he teamed up with the culinary legend Auguste Escoffier—a.k.a. the Beyoncé to his Jay-Z—and they turned Europe’s hotels into five-star temples of indulgence. When they opened The Ritz Paris in 1898, the guest list looked like the Met Gala had a baby with the British monarchy. Royalty. Authors. Actresses. Probably a few spies. If you weren’t staying at The Ritz, were you even relevant?

His obsession with detail wasn’t just about thread count. Ritz once insisted that a fire should always be lit in a room—even in summer—so guests felt immediately welcomed. Every room was a stage, and Ritz was directing a silent play called Don’t You Dare Feel Uncomfortable.

That spirit of “read their mind, fix it fast” still lives on in the Ritz-Carlton’s most outrageous but quietly brilliant policy: every staff member can spend up to $2,000 to fix a guest issue—without asking for permission. Whether it’s replacing a lost engagement ring (yes, really) or flying in your kid’s favorite stuffed animal, no one’s checking a budget sheet before making your day. Ritz didn’t invent magic, but he came pretty close to operationalizing it.

By 1911, his vision hopped the pond. Enter The Ritz-Carlton, and with it came marble everything, gold everything else, and service so polished you’d swear the staff could teleport. Even during the Great Depression, the Boston Ritz-Carlton opened with the audacity of a hotel that knew it was better than you—and that you’d still book a suite.

After a few decades in quiet luxury exile, the brand got its groove back in the 1980s and hasn’t looked down since. Today, The Ritz-Carlton does everything from hosting diplomatic summits to putting you on a yacht with 24/7 butler service and zero shame in ordering lobster bisque at 2am.

Oh, and every staff member still carries a “Credo Card,” which is like the Magna Carta of high-touch hospitality. You can ask to see one. They’ll show you. It’s weirdly thrilling.

So yeah, you can thank César Ritz not just for bougie rooms and top-shelf hotel bars—but for turning hospitality into high art. And for proving that sometimes, it really is about who folded the napkin.