Fairmont Le Montreux Palace – the pearl of the Swiss Riviera

Facing the Alps across Lake Geneva, Fairmont Le Montreux Palace has presided over the town's waterfront since 1906, when the Swiss architect Eugène Jost completed it for the hoteliers Alexandre Emery and Ami Chessex in a declared eighteen months, the hotel opening on 19 March that year. The new Palace arrived wired for electricity and plumbed with hot and cold running water in every room, making it the most modern hotel on what had already become known as the Swiss Riviera. It still looks the part: 235 rooms and suites dressed in Belle Époque detail, six restaurants and bars, and a 2,000 sqm spa built into the lower floors facing the lake. The MICHELIN Guide marks it out with Two MICHELIN Keys. The street outside carries the name Avenue Claude Nobs, after the Montreux Jazz Festival's founder, and the connection runs deeper than the signage: one suite is dedicated jointly to Nobs and to Freddie Mercury, who made Montreux his second home.

01The house

Montreux's hotel story starts earlier, in 1837, with a lakeside inn called the Hôtel du Cygne; Emery and Chessex bought it in 1881 and, in 1895, formed the company Le Montreux Palace & Cygne to build something grander beside it. Jost, who had trained in Paris at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts under Louis-Jules André and Victor Laloux, raised the new building in record time, joining it to the older Cygne by a Grand Hall and a Salon de Musique.

During the First World War the hotel became a hospital for wounded French and British soldiers; by the 1920s it had reverted to its original purpose, drawing aristocrats, Russian princes, New York bankers and maharajahs back through its doors. Its grandest diplomatic moment came on 20 July 1936, when the Montreux Convention, governing passage through the Turkish Straits, was signed in the Salle des Fêtes after five hundred delegates arrived from the Turkish Republic. The building is listed on the Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National and Regional Significance and has belonged to Historic Hotels Worldwide since 2018.

02Rooms and suites

The hotel is sold as the largest five-star address on the Swiss Riviera, with 51 of its rooms configured as suites. The Panorama Suite is given over, in alternating fashion, to the memories of Freddie Mercury and Claude Nobs, its walls carrying photographs of both men, its private terrace open to a 360-degree view of lake and mountains. Higher still, a Penthouse Suite and a suite named for Quincy Jones, who recorded for years in Montreux, take the top floor with their own rooftop terraces, while the Presidential Suite keeps a dining room for eight and a small kitchen for guests who would rather not leave the building at all. Bathrooms throughout are stocked with Le Labo amenities.

Insider tip

Check-in 3pm, check-out noon; indoor parking available; a short walk from Montreux station.

03Where to eat

Dining runs across six rooms and bars, each tuned to a different hour of the day. Mornings belong to La Palmeraie, whose breakfast buffet includes freshly baked bread and viennoiseries alongside organic honey harvested from beehives the hotel sponsors above Montreux, sourced from the Miellerie de l'Alliaz. For lunch and dinner, La Terrasse du Petit Palais serves Mediterranean and brasserie dishes in summer, open to the lake and the Alps, while the Montreux Jazz Café takes its cue directly from the festival next door. Executive chef Frédéric Gardette, previously of the Café de la Paix and The Peninsula Paris, also oversees what the hotel calls one of the best Sunday brunches on the Swiss Riviera, laid out across its Belle Époque salons.

04The bar

Funky Claude's Bar took its name from the nickname Deep Purple gave Claude Nobs in a famous song, replacing the long-running Harry's Bar in the summer of 2014, a year after Nobs's death. It still runs live music and DJ sets on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, alongside a list of house and classic cocktails. For a quieter hour, the Lounge Bar gathers guests and Montreux locals around an open fire for morning coffee, a light lunch, a glass of champagne or a late snack, in what the house describes as a living-room atmosphere.

05Spa and wellbeing

Below stairs, the Fairmont Spa spreads across 2,000 square metres, with a steam room, sauna, Jacuzzi, and both indoor and outdoor pools set against gardens running down toward the water; a dedicated café, Pureaty, serves the pool deck. Treatments draw on Biologique Recherche and on Swiss Perfection, the Vaudois skincare house built around ingredients grown at Château Vullierens.

06The neighbourhood

Until 2013 the road outside was simply part of the Grand-Rue; the commune renamed it in honour of the Montreux Jazz Festival's founder seven months after his death. The change took effect on 1 October that year, covering close to 500 metres of road that runs past the Congress Centre and the Parc Vernex, where the festival is still staged every summer. From the hotel gardens, the lakeside promenade leads on to the Château de Chillon and, inland, to the terraced vineyards of Lavaux; Geneva Airport is around ninety kilometres away, about an hour by direct train or by car.

07Making the most of a stay

Check-in is at 3pm and check-out at noon. Self-parking in the hotel's indoor garage runs to CHF 42 a day, valet CHF 48, for anyone arriving by road; those coming by rail step off at Montreux station, a short walk from the lobby. Breakfast at La Palmeraie is charged at CHF 45 per person when it is not already included in the room rate (prices read in October 2026). The best fortnight to book remains early July, when the Montreux Jazz Festival fills the terraces and Funky Claude's Bar runs live sets most evenings instead of just three.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.