St. Moritz is the destination of our long-weekend road trip to the Eastern side of Switzerland. We spent 4 posts describing our journey over five mountain passes to get here, see part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
For this post, let’s hear a 2012 Swing Out Sister instrumental:
St. Moritz (German: Sankt Moritz, Romansh: San Murezzan, Italian: San Maurizio, French: Saint-Maurice) is an Alpine resort town situated in the canton of (the) Grisons (French), or canton of Graubünden (German). Graubünden is the largest and easternmost canton of Switzerland and has international borders with Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein.
The town lies in the Engadine valley, at an elevation of about 1,800 metres (5,910 ft) above sea level. The highest summit in the Eastern Alps is Piz Bernina at 4,048 m (13,283 ft), just about 20 km (10 miles) southeast of St. Moritz.
St. Moritz is first mentioned around 1137–39 as ad sanctum Mauricium. During Medieval times, visitors came here in the summer to enjoy the curative spring waters.
Most of the population speaks German, with Italian being second most common, and Portuguese being third (6.6%). The town is split into two halves: the older and ritzier Sankt Moritz Dorf, and Sankt Moritz Bad at the southeast end where most of the spas are located.
St. Moritz has been a resort for winter sport vacations since 1864 when Johannes Badrutt first brought English tourists here in the winter. In 1856, he bought a small guesthouse in St. Moritz and started to rebuild it, to create the Hotel Engadiner Kulm, which is today known as the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz.
The Badrutt family bought the Hotel Beau Rivage in St. Moritz and altered it to create the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel which we see today (above) in the town center.
The hotel has been a playground of the world’s rich, famous and aristocratic since then. For the status-conscious, it is still the place to be seen.
The town hosted twice the Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948. It is probably one of the most glamorous international winter resort.
The town center is filled with luxury fashion stores, lining Via Serlas (above). We walked around and peered into some windows. As it is the low season, the town center was kind of quiet, except a group of international students from a Swiss boarding school.
Chamonix in France is also a chic Alpine resort but the shops were mostly selling designer sportswear. St Moritz seems to cater to a seriously affluent group of old-money clientele – see diamonds in Cartier’s window display.
The town enjoys more than 300 days of sunshine. The sun is the symbol of the town. It is apparently extremely popular in the summer months as an altitude training base for distance athletes, particularly cyclists, runners, and race walkers.
Lake St Moritz as well as neighboring Lake Silvaplana are also well known as a destination for sailing, rowing, windsurfing, and kite-surfing. The wind pattern in the Engadin valley is predictable and reliable.
Food truck by the lake – “Soul Food Trailer” housed in a Model Airstream 4U.
St. Moritz is the highest town (with a sizable urban area) in Switzerland with a railway station (below). We passed it on a bus on our way to the funicular station for Muottas Muragl (next post).
Many hotels in this town close during the low season – September-November. Our hotel was still receiving guests but several of its restaurants were closed. The hotel was built in 1896 as the Grand Hotel des Bains, and Kempinski took it over in 2002.
The hotel was doing a promotion of Verve Cliquot champagne, hence the orange cable car. Although the hotel was pretty empty, it was very adequately staffed and they were very helpful and accommodating.
After driving two days non-stop in the mountains, we took full advantage of the spa and sauna which were also quiet and thus relatively safe.