Althoff Seehotel Überfahrt – a ferryman's name, three MICHELIN Keys

On the eastern shore of Lake Tegernsee, in the Schorn quarter of Rottach-Egern, a hotel has carried the name Überfahrt – the crossing – since the estate here held the old right to run the ferry boat over the Egerner Bucht. Rebuilt as a modern five-star resort at the turn of the millennium and run by Althoff Hotels since 2007, it belongs to The Leading Hotels of the World. The MICHELIN Guide gives it Three MICHELIN Keys, and the hotel describes itself as an Elegant Nature Resort only 45 minutes by car from Munich, with one of the more striking spa landscapes in Europe and award-winning kitchens across its five restaurants. Behind the contemporary façade sits a guest list with real history: Ludwig Thoma, the singer Leo Slezak and Prince Rainier of Monaco all once stepped off the little rowing ferry onto this same shoreline. Today it is 174 rooms and suites, a 3,000-square-metre spa and a kitchen brigade still chasing the next accolade.

01The house

Long before the current glass-and-timber building, a farmstead stood on this patch of shore: records trace a Gehöft here to 1427, and the Höß family, who settled the land from 1740, held the old privilege of operating the Überfahrt, the ferry crossing to the Point peninsula opposite. That ferry right is the literal root of the hotel's name, and the same rowing crossing, run by hand, still brings guests over from the far shore today. Josef Höß turned the farmstead into a licensed inn in the 1870s, and over the following decades the Gasthof zur Überfahrt became the social heart of the Tegernsee valley, with a theatre hall, dances and the valley's winter-sport galas.

The postwar hotel passed through the Hurler family, and in 1991 its owners opted for a complete rebuild rather than further patchwork renovation, reopening in 2001 as a modern lakeside resort; the glasswork of the pool hall and its roof lantern was the work of the artist Thierry Boissel. After a run of international operators, Althoff Hotels took over management in 2007, and the hotel remains owned by the Hurler family's own company, a continuity of nearly eight decades on the same shoreline.

02Rooms and suites

The hotel counts 174 rooms and suites in total – 51 suites and 123 rooms – each with its own terrace or balcony looking either onto the Alpine wall above the valley or across open water to the far shore. Categories run from the Elegant Nature Room and its Deluxe and Junior Suite variants up to the Wallberg Suite, the Maisonette Lake View Suite, the Tegernsee Suite and the Signature Suite, the last of these freshly redesigned as part of a wider renovation completed in August 2026 that also brought a newly styled bar and a daily Kids Club.

Insider tip

Reach it by the hotel's own rowing ferry across the Egerner Bucht, or by road 45 minutes from Munich.

03Where to eat

The hotel's name restaurant has carried serious weight in German gastronomy. From 2008 to 2023, Christian Jürgens ran the kitchen at Restaurant Überfahrt, and from 2013 to 2023 the restaurant held three MICHELIN stars – a run that also brought it Feinschmecker's Restaurant of the Year in 2010 and named Jürgens Diners Club Cook of the Year. Since September 2024, Cornelia Fischer has led the kitchen, built around what the house calls a cosmopolitan, fair-product philosophy with some ingredients grown on site.

Four further addresses share the same roof. Il Barcaiolo serves Italian cooking recognised with two Gault&Millau toques; Egerner Bucht turns out Alpine dishes such as beef tartare from Irschenberg Aubrac cattle, framed by one of the best lake views in the house; Bayernstube keeps to hearty Bavarian classics; and Fährhütte14, rated 14 Gault&Millau points, offers a more relaxed hut atmosphere and doubles as an event space. For guests who want to cook rather than only eat, the Genusswerkstatt runs private dining and cookery sessions for small and larger groups.

04The bar

The Überfahrer Bar is the house's cocktail room, with light snacks alongside the drinks list and, in summer, a lakefront terrace that turns the view of the Egerner Bucht into the main attraction. It was restyled during the hotel-wide renovation completed in August 2026, alongside the new spa and the refreshed Signature Suites.

05Spa and wellbeing

Since August 2026 the 4 elements spa by Althoff has been completely rebuilt around four themes – water, warmth, movement and stillness – across 3,000 square metres on the lakeshore. Its heart is a 28-metre indoor pool, backed by a warm hot pool and, in summer, a heated 17-metre outdoor pool, with private access down to Lake Tegernsee itself. The sauna world runs from a 90-degree Finnish sauna to a gentler 55-degree bio-clay sauna, a 65-degree herbal sauna and a 42-degree steam bath, while quiet rooms and a Silence Lounge are built for doing nothing at all. A Technogym fitness area and a CORE ROOM for Reformer Pilates, mat Pilates and yoga cover the more active end of the programme, and the spa also runs a day-spa option for non-residents and a Kids Club for ages three to twelve.

06The neighbourhood

Rottach-Egern sits on the southern tip of Lake Tegernsee, one of Bavaria's cleaner Alpine lakes, with the hotel in the lakeside Schorn district and Munich roughly 45 minutes away by car. The valley keeps its traditional costume culture and festival calendar very much alive, and the hotel lists a ski area eight kilometres off and a golf course six kilometres away for guests who want to leave the shoreline for a few hours.

07Making the most of a stay

Book the Dine-Around arrangement to move between the hotel's restaurants course by course rather than committing to one table for the whole stay. Ask at the spa reception about the Ritual Rooms, private suites of at least 38 square metres built for a single treatment or a couple's ritual away from the main spa floor. And do not skip the rowing crossing itself: the old Bavarian ferry still puts across the Egerner Bucht to the hotel's own mooring, a small piece of nineteenth-century travel still working exactly as it did when the house first took its name.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.