Suvretta House

Suvretta House

St Moritz has a reputation that precedes it by some distance, and Suvretta House has been part of that reputation since 1912. Two kilometres from the town centre, set in parkland above the Upper Engadine valley, the Belle Époque façade with its turrets and grand arched windows has looked out over the same view of frozen lakes and snow-covered peaks for seven generations of the same founding family. That continuity shapes everything about the place: the pace, the staff, the returning guests, the particular formality of the Grand Restaurant where men are still expected in jacket and tie, and the sense of a hotel that knows precisely what it is and has no intention of becoming anything else. The 181 rooms and suites vary between classic and contemporary in style, all with mountain or piste views and marble bathrooms, some with private balconies. The hotel is the only property in St Moritz with its own private ski lift, connecting directly to the Corviglia ski area, and the ski school and ski concierge mean that the logistics of a ski week are handled without leaving the property. In summer it becomes a different kind of resort: three clay tennis courts, a golf putting course, Nordic walking with guides, sailing on the lake. The spa runs to 4,670 square metres across three and a half floors, with a 25-metre indoor pool, outdoor whirlpool, and treatments built around organic and local ingredients including Engadine pine oil. Two mountain restaurants, Chasellas and Trutz, are accessible directly from the slopes. The guests at Suvretta tend to return, often year after year, and sometimes across generations. There is a kind of guest this hotel suits and a kind it does not, and the formality of the Grand Restaurant, the dress code, the particular old-world register of the whole place, is enough information to know which you are. For those it suits, there are very few hotels in the Alps that come close. The short version: A 181-room Belle Époque grand hotel in its own parkland above St Moritz, owned by the same family since 1912, with the only private ski lift in the resort, a serious spa, and the kind of unhurried formality that has kept the same guests returning for generations.