Badrutt's Palace

Badrutt's Palace has presided over St. Moritz since 1896, its granite tower as much a symbol of the Engadine as the frozen lake below. This is where winter tourism's founding mythology lives on: fur-trimmed arrivals, vintage Rolls-Royce shuttles, and Le Grand Hall's afternoon tea, where Alpine society has gathered beneath the great window's lake view for over a century.

Rooms range from cosy wood-panelled doubles to tower suites of ducal scale, most facing the lake and the peaks beyond; decor stays classically Swiss—warm, polished, deliberately untrendy. Service is generational, with staff families as loyal as the guest families who return each season. Winter brings ski-butler service to the slopes, ice-rink mornings and a social calendar that peaks over New Year.

Dining sprawls from Italian institution Chesa Veglia—a 1658 farmhouse of fondue and pizza—to refined gastronomy and one of the Alps' liveliest nightclub cellars. The spa's indoor pool faces the lake through a glass wall, with sun terraces for post-piste recovery. Summer reveals hiking, sailing and a quieter, greener Palace at gentler rates.