In September 1864, as the young hotelier Johannes Badrutt was checking out four English guests at the Faller Hotel (now the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz), in Switzerland, he made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. “Come back and spend Christmas in Saint-Moritz,” he said. “It’s sunnier and less rainy than London.”
It wasn’t an instant yes. Winter conditions were known to be severe in the region, and skis, sleds, and horse-drawn carriages were the only ways to get around. Come autumn, travelers fled. But Badrutt guaranteed to cover the foursome’s travel expenses if they couldn’t bask in the sun, in shirt sleeves, in December.
Badrutt’s gambit marked the dawn of Alpine tourism. The following year saw an influx of English tourists to the once quiet town, attracted by the dry air and sunlight. Europeans followed suit, including luminaries such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Shah of Iran, and the conductor Herbert von Karajan. In the early 1910s, Czar Nicholas II was rumored to have earmarked the town’s Carlton Hotel as his future residence. (He was assassinated in 1918, before even visiting the Alpine town.) As Saint-Moritz rose to prominence, so did neighboring locales and other high-altitude destinations in Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and France.
Stars such as Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and the glamorous couple Brigitte Bardot and Gunter Sachs—who shuttled between chalets, ski slopes, and nightclubs—brought further glamour to the Alps. By the 1960s, European mountain towns were investing heavily in their infrastructure, cultivating their own Alpine culture and character.
Enthusiastic skiers gravitated toward France’s Trois Vallées—Méribel, Courchevel, and Val Thorens—where snowfall was more reliable. In Gstaad, in the Swiss Bernese Oberland region, a day’s sledding was followed by a martini or two at the Palace hotel. The stylish town of Verbier attracted the British upper classes, while the charming Crans-Montana became a winter haven for laid-back Italians. Then there were the Dolomites, with picturesque villages and pasta to match.
In his glossy new book, The Alps: Hotels, Destinations, Culture, Sebastian Schoellgen, the founder of the travel collective 84 Rooms, compiles the most exciting Alpine destinations and under-the-radar boutique hotels. Modern chalets for rent—the Chalet Églantine, in Meribel, with punchy interiors by Pierre Yovanovitch; the minimalist Peterhof chalets in Zwischenwasser, Vorarlberg; and the pioneering carbon-neutral Icaro Hotel, in the Dolomites—are paired with more classical retreats, such as Suvretta House, in Saint-Moritz, and the Hotel Schmelzhof, in Lech am Arlberg, Austria.
Flipping through the book, the phrase that described Saint-Moritz during its most decadent years comes to mind: “On Top of the World.” —Elena Clavarino
The Alps: Hotels, Destinations, Culture, by Sebastian Schoellgen, is out now from Phaidon’s Monacelli Press
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at AIR MAIL