The Best Hotels in Lucerne

A private cable car hauls you up from Lucerne's lakeside to this Art Deco hotel, which is a detail that sets the tone for everything that follows. The canary-and-blue facade, the geometric carpets, the parquet floors, and the freestanding tubs in newly renovated bathrooms all commit fully to the style. Most rooms have balconies over the lake and its ring of snowy mountains, and the Louis Bar runs live jazz most nights.

Each of the 74 rooms at this boutique hotel in Lucerne's Neustadt is styled after a different Swiss waterfall, which sounds like a theme-park gimmick until you see how quietly it works. The building is old-school and substantial, the neighborhood is where locals actually live, and the lake and medieval old town are a short walk in either direction. Downstairs, a Spanish restaurant keeps things lively.

The Hauser family has been running this grand lakefront hotel for five generations, which explains why the staff remember your name before you remember theirs. The 101 classically appointed rooms look out over Lake Lucerne and the Alps beyond, and the guest book reads like a historical fever dream: Churchill, Tolstoy, Wagner, Neil Armstrong. A brasserie, a gastronomic restaurant, a bar popular with locals, and a fifth-floor spa with lake views round things out nicely.