by Kelly Stavropoulou

There is no other destination as synonymous with winter luxury, fairytale and snow adventures as St. Moritz. Here everyone feels that they are in the right place: those who want to ski, those who want to drink champagne, do their shopping, visit galleries and museums, eat raclette, dance in clubs….

It is a generous and premium resort for every taste. The first sight you usually see on arrival are the white-gloved chauffeurs outside the polished Rolls Royces who greet guests at the Engadin airport to take them to the hotel. It’s true that the luxury and glitz can be a momentary distraction for those who have come to ski down the slopes in their boots – and no, it’s not that nobody comes here for the skiing, but for everything else, because the St. Moritz has a 150-year tradition in winter sports and can offer an incomparable sports experience.

Accommodation is a very interesting chapter in this wonderful part of the Swiss Alps. A basic assessment could be that Badrutt’s Palace appeals to those who desire glamor and tradition, Carlton Hotel to design lovers and Kempinski Grand Hotel des Bains to the more cosmopolitan. Badrutt’s Palace, of course, in its place since 1896, always remains one of the most legendary hotels in the world, where the most famous and glamorous people of this planet have stayed. There are so many many stories written in here that it wouldn’t make sense to mention only some and exclude others. Unless it is about Alfred Hitchcock maybe… who visited St. Moritz and the hotel for the first time in 1924 and it fascinated him so much that he returned to it, specifically to Suite 501, a total of 36 times. In it he spent his honeymoon with Alma Reville, celebrated Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries and above all, wrote his cinematic masterpiece The Birds is shot in St. Moritz. Gunter Sachs is also a man who is totally associated with St. Moritz. The German playboy, millionaire – descendant of Opel – and third husband of Brigitte Bardot, who was also a champion in the sport of Bobsleigh, was the president of St. Moritz Bobsleigh Club and Turn 13 on the St. Moritz was honorably named after him.

Finally, an honorable mention to the founder of Badrutt’s Palace, Johannes Badrutt, who very characteristically said sometime in 1860, explaining that nothing happens by chance, that if everyone who came for Christmas holidays in St. Moritz, they would return at Easter too, they would see the alpine meadows so sunny and green, that they would think that surely this nature must exist behind every champagne toast in the winter landscape.