Suvretta House

A hotel with corner turrets stands on a hillside between St. Moritz and Champfèr, above the lake that takes the hamlet's name, and has stood there since 1912. Suvretta House in St. Moritz was built by Anton Bon, a hotelier whose descendants still own it, on a site two kilometres west of the resort's centre, chosen for its view down the Upper Engadin towards the Maloja pass and for its distance from the town.

History

Anton Sebastian Bon came from the Graubünden hotel trade and had run hotels in St. Moritz before he commissioned Suvretta House. The hotel opened in the winter of 1912 at the height of the Belle Époque building boom in the Engadin, when the resort had already made its name for winter sports. The house has passed down the family and is now run by its fourth generation, the Candrian family. It built its own ski lift to link the grounds with the Corviglia ski area and founded its own ski school, and both still operate. It also kept the two-season rhythm of the old Engadin hotels: it opens for the winter and the summer and closes in between.

Architecture and design

Karl Koller designed the building in the historicist manner of the period, with a silhouette of towers and turrets that reads from across the valley; the Swiss inventory of cultural property lists it as an object of regional significance. The main front faces south-west over Lake Champfèr and Lake Silvaplana. Inside, the proportions are those of a grand hotel: a long hall, high dining rooms and corridors wide enough for the trunks of the first guests. Later wings, set lower on the slope, hold the spa.

Rooms and suites

Around 180 rooms and suites are spread through the main building. Rooms on the lake side look down the valley; those on the mountain side face the Suvretta slope. The hotel has a long tradition of families returning year after year, and family suites and connecting rooms are part of the stock.

Dining

The Grand Restaurant is the formal dining room, where half-board guests dine in the evening and a jacket and tie are expected of men. The Suvretta Stube serves Swiss and Engadin dishes in a panelled room. Chasellas, at the foot of the hotel's ski lift, feeds skiers at lunch and reopens for dinner, and the Trutz hut, higher up the mountain, is the hotel's own mountain restaurant. Anton's Bar takes its name from the founder.

Wellness

The spa covers 4,670 square metres across several levels, with an indoor pool looking down the valley, saunas and steam rooms, treatment rooms and a gym. In winter the grounds hold a natural ice rink and a curling sheet; in summer the tennis courts come into use, and the hiking paths of the Suvretta forest start at the door.

Weddings and events

Suvretta House hosts weddings and corporate meetings in both seasons. Winter weddings use the hotel's private slope and lift, and summer weddings the terrace and lawns above the lake. Function rooms serve dinners and conferences, and the hotel's winter galas. A children's club looks after younger guests during family celebrations.

Location

The hotel stands in the Suvretta district, two kilometres west of St. Moritz-Dorf on the road to Champfèr and Silvaplana. St. Moritz station is the terminus of the Rhaetian Railway's Albula line, a UNESCO World Heritage line since 2008, and the start of the Glacier Express to Zermatt; the journey from Zurich takes about three and a half hours. Samedan airport, the highest in Europe at 1,707 metres, is ten kilometres away and handles private jets. Zurich and Milan Malpensa are the commercial airports, each about three hours by road. For a luxury hotel in St. Moritz, the distance from the town is unusual, and intentional.