After a $100 million renovation, the grande dame Hotel Royal Savoy in Lausanne is now even grander
To properly appreciate the Hotel Royal Savoy, a grand hotel reborn last year after a $100 million makeover, you first have to picture its setting in Lausanne. A Swiss city that a surrealist might have designed, Lausanne is built on a series of exceptionally steep, undulating hills laced with winding streets that resemble bobsled runs and are decked out in textbook Belle Époque architecture. The views of Lake Geneva, the nearby terraced vineyards of the Lavaux region and the jagged French Alps across the lake can redefine anyone’s concept of “scenic”.
Built in 1906, the Royal Savoy was grand indeed, serving as the haven for the Spanish royal family and King Bhumibol of Thailand during World War II, and later for rock royalty like Joe Cocker and Phil Collins, headlining at the nearby Montreux Jazz Festival in the 1990s.
But when I visited 15 years ago, the grande dame had fallen on hard times. I recall walking through vintage iron gates across a somewhat overgrown lawn to the turreted fairytale facade of this Art Nouveau dowager. Inside, it was rich with dusty tilework and huge windows that offered glimpses of the lake and the Alps. It was like stepping into the pages of a vintage Baedeker, but as I sat down in a near-empty dining room for breakfast, it was clear that it was a place running on fumes.
MKV is known for historic renovations of other European grande dames, like the Schweizerhof in Bern, and Vafiadis loves dramatic lighting and clean modernist design, which highlight the grandeur of the hotel’s vast public spaces. The new furniture harkens back to the unrelenting curves of Art Nouveau, and there are nice historic details, like the century-old tiles unearthed during renovation and then restored. Vafiadis has even flirted with a bit of welcome whimsy, so that the public rooms feel a bit like the Grand Budapest Hotel.
(This story appears in the Mar-Apr 2016 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)