Badrutt's Palace Hotel

Badrutt's Palace Hotel

The tower comes into view first, above Via Serlas and the lake, three and a half hours by train from Zurich at 1,830 metres in the Upper Engadin, in the far south-east of Switzerland, a short drive from the Italian border. It is not the original. The first burned in 1967 and was rebuilt within a year, which tells you something about how this place treats its own history. Caspar Badrutt hired the Swiss architects Chiodera and Tschudi to turn the old Hotel Beau Rivage into the Palace, which opened on 29 July 1896, and the family has kept it ever since, passing it from his son Hans to Hans’s widow Helen, then to their sons Andrea and Hansjürg. Today Hansjürg’s widow, Anikó Badrutt, is the majority shareholder. The hotel has 163 rooms, 47 of them suites, including those in the Serlas Wing that Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel added in 2025. In winter it runs on a staff of 680, under managing director Richard Leuenberger, who ran its food and beverage before leaving for Hong Kong and came back to lead it in 2018. The centre of the house is Le Grand Hall, wood-panelled and lit by its windows onto the lake, where afternoon tea comes with a pianist and the pâtisserie is taken seriously. Le Restaurant serves French and international cooking in the old manner. La Coupole-Matsuhisa occupies what was once the first indoor tennis hall in Europe, and has done so under Nobu Matsuhisa since the 2014–15 season. King’s Social House, a fixture since 1963, was relaunched in 2018 with Jason Atherton in the kitchen and walls by the street artists Bane & Pest. Across the road, the Chesa Veglia, a farmhouse more than three and a half centuries old that the family converted in the 1930s, holds three more restaurants and a bar, and in winter the hotel runs the Paradiso mountain club up on Corviglia. Recent winters have brought guest kitchens from Jordnaer in Copenhagen, Santiago Lastra’s KOL and Boragó from Santiago. The spa was rebuilt in 2008–10 for more than 70 million francs, an outdoor pool followed in 2024, and up to 80 per cent of the building is heated with water drawn from Lake St. Moritz. Hauser & Wirth keeps a gallery on site. This is a grand hotel in the full social sense, a building that expects to be watched and enjoys it. The Grand Hall between four and seven is the real attraction, a slow procession of furs, ski jackets, families on their fourth generation of visits and people pretending not to notice who just walked in. The New Year’s Eve party, with decorations costing close to a million francs, is the hotel’s own idea of a high point and it does not apologise for that. Service is old-school and attentive, with butlers available across the rooms, and the season is short and dense, open only from early December to late March and from early June to early September, which gives the winter months a compressed, slightly feverish energy. Summer is quieter, with the outdoor pool, tennis and padel, and the valley’s lakes to walk around. You should not come if you want anonymity, pared-back design, early nights or a stay that feels like value, and anyone who finds dressing for dinner tiresome will spend a lot of time in their room. Skiers who care only about the mountain can find a quieter base. You should come if you like a hotel with a sense of theatre and a long memory, if you want a dozen places to eat without fetching your coat, and if you would enjoy watching St. Moritz at its most St. Moritz from a good armchair. The short version: A family-owned grand hotel on Lake St. Moritz, open since 1896, with 163 rooms, a new Antonio Citterio wing, and an unusually large restaurant programme spread across the main house, a 17th-century farmhouse and a club on Corviglia. The 155 rooms and suites are individually furnished, many with views over Lake St Moritz and the Engadine mountains, and the larger suites, including the 280-square-metre Hans Badrutt suite, are among the most serious rooms in Swiss Alpine hospitality. Butler service is standard in all suites. The dining offer runs to eight restaurants, from French haute cuisine to Nobu to Chesa Veglia, the 17th-century farmhouse across the road that functions as the hotel's most atmospheric dining room, with wood panelling, low ceilings, and a fondue that people plan their winters around. The Palace Wellness spa draws on organic botanicals and the surrounding landscape, the indoor and outdoor pools are exceptional, and the King's Club nightclub below the hotel has been a fixture of the St Moritz season for decades. The hotel operates seasonally, closing between seasons, and the winter iteration, from December through April, is the one that made the reputation. The White Turf horse races on the frozen lake, the polo, the Cresta Run: the events of the St Moritz season orbit Badrutt's Palace in the way that events at a royal court orbit the palace itself, which is more or less the intended effect. The short version: A 155-room grand palace hotel above Lake St Moritz, open since 1896, with eight restaurants including Chesa Veglia, a Nobu, butler service in all suites, and the most storied social history of any hotel in the Alps.