Switzerland, for Exclusive Villa Collection, begins at its centre, on Lake Lucerne. The lake lies among mountains in the heart of the country, about an hour by car from Zurich Airport, and every view from its shores ends in peaks: Pilatus and Rigi, the Stanserhorn and Klewenalp, and the high valley of Engelberg. Lucerne, half an hour away, keeps the Chapel Bridge and Water Tower, the Lion Monument, the Old Town and the Musegg Wall close to the water.
We open the country with Hotel Villa Honegg, an Art Nouveau villa of 1905 standing alone on the Bürgenstock, 914 metres above the lake. It has twenty-five rooms and suites, an outdoor infinity pool heated to 34°C in every season, and a kitchen that cooks from its own herb garden and the farms around it, and it is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
In the south, in the Valais, BEAUSiTE Zermatt stands in the middle of car-free Zermatt, a Belle Époque hotel of 1907 with sixty-seven rooms and suites, most of them facing the Matterhorn. At the top of the house the Tower Spa Suite rises over two floors to a private tower, and the outdoor infinity pool stays warm under the mountain in winter. Zermatt is ringed by 38 peaks over 4,000 metres, with 360 kilometres of slopes and skiing on the glacier even in summer.
We plan Switzerland in two ways. Above Lake Lucerne it is the Alps without the noise of a resort town: a summer week for walking, swimming and long dinners on the terrace, or a winter stay by the fire, with Lucerne and a helicopter over the Alps within reach. In Zermatt it is the mountain itself: skiing in winter and on the glacier in summer, climbing and walking, and the Matterhorn in the window. Flights, trains, transfers and days out are arranged as one plan, privately.
For winter mountain houses beyond Switzerland, see Alpine Escapes and our Austria guide; for journeys built around the spa, see Wellness Retreats.
