Victoria-Jungfrau Grand Hotel & Spa

Across the Höhematte, a meadow in the middle of Interlaken that has been kept free of building, the snowfields of the Jungfrau fill the view from the Höheweg. The Victoria-Jungfrau Grand Hotel & Spa in Interlaken stands on that promenade, a long Belle Époque front with a domed central tower, built up in stages since 1865.

History

Interlaken grew rich on the first wave of Alpine tourism. The town sits on the strip of land between the lakes of Thun and Brienz, and by the middle of the nineteenth century British visitors were arriving in numbers to look at the Jungfrau. In 1864 hoteliers and residents bought the Höhematte to stop it being built over, which is why the great hotels of the Höheweg still face open grass.

The Hotel Victoria opened in 1865, founded by the hotelier Eduard Ruchti and named after the British queen whose subjects made up much of its clientele. In 1895 it was joined to the neighbouring Hotel Jungfrau, and the two houses were linked by the central tower building that gives the hotel its silhouette. The double name has stuck ever since.

The twentieth century was harder. Two world wars emptied the Swiss resorts, and the grand hotels of the Bernese Oberland had to reinvent themselves for a broader market. The Victoria-Jungfrau kept its full scale through those years, and it later became the flagship of a small Swiss group of historic hotels, alongside houses in Bern, Lucerne and Zurich.

Architecture and design

The façade is a catalogue of nineteenth-century resort architecture: long ranges of balconied windows, mansard roofs and the tower with its dome at the centre. Inside, the public rooms keep their high ceilings, columns and stucco. Later additions, including the spa, were set behind the historic front, so the view of the hotel from the Höhematte has barely changed in a century.

Rooms and suites

Rooms and suites are spread across the historic wings. The ones to ask for face south over the meadow towards the Jungfrau, 4,158 metres high and about twenty kilometres away beyond the Lauterbrunnen valley; the rest look on to the gardens or the town. Many have balconies, and the higher floors see over the trees of the Höhematte.

Dining

La Terrasse is the formal dining room, with tall windows on the Höhematte side, and the hotel runs further restaurants and a bar in a more casual register. Breakfast and summer lunches move outside when the weather allows, with the mountain in full view.

Wellness

The spa covers several thousand square metres, with an indoor pool, saunas, steam rooms and treatment rooms. It is the hotel's main draw for guests who come outside the walking and skiing seasons.

Weddings and events

The hotel has a ballroom and a run of smaller salons and meeting rooms, and it is one of the main conference hotels of the Bernese Oberland, used for seminars and incentive trips as well as board meetings. Weddings are held in the historic rooms and the garden, with the Jungfrau behind the photographs.

Location

The Höheweg runs between Interlaken West and Interlaken Ost stations, and the hotel stands roughly midway. From Interlaken Ost the mountain railways climb to Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, and on to the Jungfraujoch, at 3,454 metres the highest railway station in Europe. Boats for Lake Thun leave from Interlaken West, and those for Lake Brienz from Interlaken Ost. Bern is under an hour by train and Zurich Airport a little over two. The Harder Kulm funicular, across the Aare near Interlaken Ost, climbs to a viewpoint above both lakes. For a luxury hotel in the Jungfrau region, the position is hard to better.