Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois

The Rhine runs past the windows. Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois stands on the Blumenrain in Basel with its river façade and terrace directly over the water, so close that the ferries and the summer swimmers pass beneath the dining room. The name, the Three Kings, refers to the Magi and goes back to an inn on this site recorded in 1681, which makes the house one of the oldest hotels in Europe with an unbroken history.

History

The inn Zu den drei Königen served travellers crossing the Rhine at Basel for more than a century and a half before the present building replaced it in 1844, a classical block designed to be the first modern grand hotel in Switzerland. Napoleon Bonaparte had stayed in the old house in 1797; the new one received Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria's circle, and in August 1897 Theodor Herzl, who was photographed leaning on his balcony during the First Zionist Congress held in the city. Picasso, Thomas Mann and Queen Elizabeth II came later. By the end of the twentieth century the hotel had been divided into offices and needed rescue. Thomas Straumann, the Basel dental-implant entrepreneur, bought it in 2004 and closed it for a restoration that put back the 1844 interiors and the river terrace; it reopened in March 2006 and has been run as an independent house since.

Architecture and design

The 1844 building is neoclassical, with a long symmetrical river front, a columned entrance and a corner tower. The restoration recovered the painted and gilded plasterwork of the salons, the staircase and the Blue Salon, and furnished the house with antiques and period fabrics rather than reproductions. The riverside terrace was rebuilt as the hotel's summer centre. Opposite the entrance, the Spiegelgasse and the Marktplatz with its red town hall are two minutes away.

Rooms and suites

There are around a hundred rooms and suites. The river rooms, with balconies over the Rhine towards Kleinbasel and the Mittlere Brücke, are the ones to ask for; the city rooms are quieter. The suites keep the high ceilings and parquet of the original building, and the largest, the Napoleon Suite, occupies a corner on the river. Bathrooms are in marble, and the interiors are in a classic manner of silk, mahogany and brass.

Dining

Cheval Blanc, under the chef Peter Knogl since 2007, holds three Michelin stars and 19 points in the Gault Millau guide, placing it among the handful of top restaurants in Switzerland. Its dining room looks over the river, and the cooking is French, with Mediterranean and Asian notes, served to a small number of tables. The Brasserie covers the rest of the day with a classic Swiss and French menu, the Bar des Trois Rois is a Basel institution for cocktails and jazz, and the terrace runs through the summer.

Wellness

The house has a fitness room and offers massages, but it is a city hotel of the old type without a spa or a pool. Guests swim in the Rhine with the locals in summer, floating downstream with a waterproof bag, a Basel custom.

Weddings and events

The Trois Rois is the leading wedding and banqueting address in Basel. The Grand Salon and the smaller salons on the first floor are used for dinners and receptions, and the river terrace for aperitifs and summer ceremonies. Meetings during Art Basel, the Baselworld era and the pharmaceutical conferences fill the house each year; the salons take boards and seminars of a few dozen and the ballroom a few hundred for a reception.

Location

The hotel is in the old town on the left bank, a short walk from the Marktplatz, the Münster and the Kunstmuseum, and across the bridge from the Messe halls where Art Basel is held each June. Basel SBB station is ten minutes by tram or taxi, and the EuroAirport is twenty minutes away. As a luxury hotel in Basel it is the one with the river at the door.