Fairmont Le Montreux Palace

Le Montreux Palace opened in 1906 at the height of the Belle Époque, when the mild microclimate of the Vaud riviera made Montreux a winter salon for half of Europe. Its vast ochre-and-white façade, crowned with twin cupolas, still dominates the lakefront promenade, and its stuccoed public rooms are among the finest surviving interiors of the period in Switzerland.

The hotel's most famous resident was Vladimir Nabokov, who lived in a suite here for the last sixteen years of his life and is commemorated by a statue in the garden. Each July the Montreux Jazz Festival transforms the town and fills the Palace with musicians, continuing a musical lineage that includes the town's adopted son Freddie Mercury, whose statue stands on the lakefront nearby.

Rooms mix classical mouldings with contemporary comfort, many facing the lake and the Dents du Midi. The Willow Stream spa spans two levels with indoor and outdoor pools, and dining runs from a lakeside brasserie to terrace bars for festival evenings. The Lavaux vineyard terraces and Chillon Castle bookend the promenade walk. The Palace offers grand-hotel scale and history at rates gentler than Geneva or Zurich.