Hotel Bellevue Palace Bern – the government's own grand hotel

Hotel Bellevue Palace Bern stands in pale sandstone directly opposite the Bundeshaus, Switzerland's Federal Parliament, a position it has held since the financier Friedrich Osswald built the first Hotel Bellevue here in 1865. Torn down by his sons, who in 1910 chose to rebuild rather than enlarge, the new hotel opened in November 1913 with 200 rooms, raised behind a correct, classicist sandstone face on a structure that made it the first hotel in Switzerland built entirely of reinforced concrete. It is, in its own description, the official guesthouse of the Swiss Confederation, host over the decades to state visitors, parliamentarians, journalists and the occasional general. The MICHELIN Guide gives it Two Keys. A century on, the building still does the job it was built for: half diplomatic antechamber, half the only grand hotel in the federal capital.

01The house

Osswald's sons Alphons and Philipp, unwilling simply to modernise the old Bellevue, decided in 1910 to build an entirely new hotel on the site, commissioning the architects Paul Lindt and Max Hofmann, who looked to Berlin's Hotel Adlon for inspiration. Work began in March 1912, at one point employing up to six hundred workers on site, and the festive opening of the new two-hundred-room Bellevue Palace followed in November 1913, at a total construction cost of CHF 3,255,923.50. Behind the stone face lay a genuinely radical idea for the period: a hotel built entirely in reinforced concrete, a construction method still considered unthinkable for a building of this standing before the First World War. The hotel's symbolic weight showed itself almost immediately — during the war, General Ulrich Wille turned it into Switzerland's military headquarters.

The house has changed hands more than its stone façade suggests. In 1976 the Swiss National Bank bought the hotel, reportedly to prevent it falling into Soviet ownership for use as an embassy, before gifting it to the Swiss Confederation in 1994. A thorough overhaul followed in 2002, when the hotel closed for a year, its room count was cut almost in half and modern comforts such as air conditioning were finally installed. The Victoria-Jungfrau Collection took over management in 2007, passing in 2014 to Michel Reybier Hospitality, which still runs the hotel today; in 2017 the Confederation acquired the remaining shares outright, folding the Bellevue Palace fully into the state's own portfolio.

02Rooms and suites

The Bellevue Palace has 126 rooms, twenty-five of them suites. Superior Single and Double Rooms, from 19 to 40 square metres, look onto the courtyard or the old town; Deluxe rooms, from 27 to 48 square metres, face the Bernese Alps. Junior Suites run from 44 to 60 square metres depending on category, the Deluxe Suite stretches to 81 square metres, and the circular Tower Suite occupies 77 square metres beneath the hotel's corner dome. At the top sits the 158-square-metre Presidential Suite, built for four adults and a child, with the same sweep of river and mountain that drew Osswald to this corner of the city in the first place.

Insider tip

Book ahead during parliamentary sessions, when politicians and diplomats fill the house.

03Where to eat

Brasserie VUE is the hotel's main dining room, serving seasonal French brasserie cooking under Belle Époque ceilings, with a Menu du Jour at lunch and a wine list weighted toward France and Switzerland; the restaurant has been credited with 15 Gault Millau points. Its terrace, open in summer, is the obvious spot for the view that gives the restaurant its name, over the Aare and up to the Alps. Noumi Bar & Grill occupies ground that once belonged to Bern's old Federal Mint, a lounge-lit room where a Szechuan beef filet now shares the stage with a DJ spinning downtempo sets. Le Lobby, meanwhile, has reinvented itself as a convivial meeting point for drinks alongside sushi and sashimi, in keeping with its long history as a gathering place for Bern's political and press circles.

04The bar

The Bellevue Bar claims a genuine first: it was the first American bar in Switzerland, open since the hotel's earliest days, and for decades a quiet stage for political intrigue through the Second World War and the Cold War. Today it mixes classic and modern cocktails for politicians, diplomats, journalists and courting couples in roughly equal measure. Next door, Le Fumoir caters to cigar aficionados with a choice of Cuban cigars that includes a number of rare Cohibas, alongside chilled drinks and brasserie classics, in a room built for unhurried conversation rather than spectacle.

05Spa and wellbeing

The Bellevue Palace keeps its wellness offer deliberately modest: a Finnish sauna with separate areas for men and women, open to hotel guests only from five to ten in the evening, and the Bellevie Gym, equipped with cardio and weight-training machines and a self-service gym bar. For a full spa programme, the hotel points guests toward its sister property, the Victoria-Jungfrau Grand Hotel and Spa in Interlaken, part of the same ownership group.

06The neighbourhood

The hotel's whole character comes from its address: one side looks straight onto the Bundeshaus, the Swiss Parliament, while the river side gazes over the loop of the Aare toward the snow line of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. Bern's medieval Old Town, with its arcaded shopping streets, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Zytglogge clock tower is a five-minute walk away. The city keeps its own eccentric traditions alive nearby too, not least a family of bears that has lived in Bern since 1513. Over a century and a half the hotel's guest list has mixed state visits with star turns: Queen Elizabeth II, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela among the heads of state and royals, Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Chirac, Sophia Loren, Bruce Springsteen and Fidel Castro among the names that have passed through its lobby.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.