The Best Hotels Near Edelweiss, by the Record
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A private elevator cut into the rock face delivers you to this 30-room mountain lodge perched above Zermatt's rooftops, with the Matterhorn filling every window. The late architect Ali Tayar layered American lodge warmth, crackling fires and brown leather, against a Turkish bath and Finnish sauna. Four dining options, an indoor-outdoor pool, and a flower steam room round out a place that holds a Forbes Four Star and takes the views entirely for granted.
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Tibetan temple bells lined up beside mounted reindeer heads sets the tone: this is a Forbes Five Star luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps that can't quite decide if it's a mountain chalet or a Kyoto retreat, and somehow that tension works in its favor. Jean-Michel Gathy's design stacks alpine and Asian aesthetics until they start to look like cousins. There's a Japanese restaurant perched above 7,800 feet, a spa, pools, a golf course, and a cigar library for when serenity isn't quite the mood.
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Belle Époque turrets rising above a valley floor with the Alps stacked behind them set the scene at this grand mountain resort. Kempinski Palace Engelberg has been around forever, and the bones show it, though a recent expansion added six floors and 129 rooms without losing the old-school hotel feel. A rooftop pool, spa, ski facilities, and a kids' club mean almost nobody has an excuse to be bored. Forbes Four Star.
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Twenty-four rooms in an 18th-century villa on Lake Como, each one individually designed and stuffed with original frescoes, Murano chandeliers, and the kind of gilded mirrors that make you feel briefly aristocratic. The terraced gardens run seven acres down to the water, and a vintage orange Fiat 500 handles property transport. Ranked fourth among the World's 50 Best Hotels, Passalacqua wears its grandeur lightly, the food is simple and seasonal, and the spa hides in a subterranean vault.
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A floating pool moored on Lake Como is somehow not even the most dramatic thing about this grand hotel. Once a cardinal's summer retreat, later a princess's, Villa d'Este has been welcoming guests since the 1870s, its 152 rooms filled with art and antiquities from centuries of noble owners. George Clooney is a neighbor; the rest of the regulars are merely famous. Forbes Four Star.