Stories, guides and inspiration
There are hotels, there are holiday flats — and then there are the places that fit no category: a mayen from 1770 at the foot of the Dent Blanche, a palazzo that has welcomed travellers for a hundred and forty years, fishermen's houses saved from demolition. Places where spending the night becomes a way of inhabiting history rather than visiting it.
For centuries, Valais lived at two altitudes: the village below, the mayens and alpine pastures above. Of that summering life there remain hundreds of sun-darkened timber buildings, many of which seemed doomed to collapse in silence. A few passionate people decided otherwise.
Graubünden is a canton of passes and valley-worlds: the Engadine with its famous light, the Bregaglia valley already tilting towards Italy. Along these routes, families built grandly — and two of these houses, to our eyes among the most singular in Switzerland, now open their doors to travellers.
South of the Alps, Ticino built in stone: thick walls, stone-slab roofs, whole villages that seem to have grown out of the ground. These houses — the rustici — tell of a hard, ingenious life. Many were abandoned in the 20th century; the finest rebirths are recent, and two of them are in our collection.
Swiss heritage is not only about mountain chalets: it also lives in medieval towns, on river quays and on lake shores. This guide gathers our addresses of the plains and mid-mountains — five houses between Lake Biel and Lake Constance, by way of Solothurn and the Neuchâtel Jura, where history can be read at street level.
