Baur au Lac

Few city hotels anywhere have remained in the same family for as long as the Baur au Lac, which the Kracht family has run since Johannes Baur opened it in 1844. That continuity shows in the way the house is kept: not as a museum piece, but as a continually refreshed private residence at the foot of the Bahnhofstrasse, separated from the traffic by its own gated park and the Schanzengraben canal. Bankers, collectors and visiting statesmen have made it their Zurich address for the better part of two centuries.

The interiors trade on quiet assurance rather than spectacle. Rooms and suites are individually decorated in a range of classical and lightly contemporary registers, many looking over the park towards the lake or up to the Uetliberg. Service runs on long-tenured staff who greet returning guests by name, and the concierge desk is widely regarded as one of the best in Switzerland.

Pavillon, the glass-walled restaurant overlooking the garden, delivers refined French cooking in one of the city's prettiest dining rooms, while the Baur au Lac's cellar and wine merchant arm give the list unusual depth. The location is a two-minute walk from Paradeplatz and the flagship boutiques, yet the park keeps the house remarkably calm. It remains the definitive old-money address in Zurich.