Where hospitality has been the tradition for over 100 years – the history of Suvretta House

The cornerstone was laid on 22 April 1911, and within roughly one and a half years, a grand hotel with a view of Champfèr and Lake Silvaplana was erected on the Chasellas plateau not far from St. Moritz.

The hotel was festively inaugurated on 16 December 1912. Bon’s dream had come true. Right on time for the opening celebration, snow transformed Suvretta House into a storybook castle in the midst of spellbinding winter landscape. But the guests were also excited about the infrastructure. It spanned no fewer than 250 rooms, 370 beds, and 110 bathrooms – unthinkably luxurious in those days – rooms for bridge and billiards, for smokers and tea enthusiasts, a library, a music salon, and several generously designed, elegantly decorated and interconnected banquet and dining rooms.

Guests arrived from all over the world to delight in the Suvretta House experience and simply enjoy life to the fullest. In the course of the decades, the exclusive hotel hosted many celebrities from the arts, the movie industry, politics, and business. King Farouk of Egypt, Crown Prince Akihito, the Shah of Persia, Gregory Peck, Evita Perón and many more came to enjoy sports and fun on snow and ice, ecstatic ballroom parties, the amicable atmosphere, luxury and discretion – characteristic hallmarks upheld by Suvretta House to this very day.

Seven generations of hoteliers guided Suvretta House through its history across more than one hundred years and each one left its very own and personal mark on the hotel. As the expectations of discerning guests from all over the world changed, the hotel underwent several renewal phases in recent years. Some noteworthy milestones include the integration of a wellness paradise, the creation of the banqueting ensemble, the construction of a spacious ski room, and the total renovation of the guest rooms.

Günter Oskar Dyhrenfurth (* 12 November 1886 in Breslau; † 14 April 1975) was a professor at the University of Breslau, but after the National Socialists took over, he resigned from his teaching post and moved to Switzerland where he and his family lived from then on. He was recognized as a Himalaya expert but was also the first climber to scale numerous peaks throughout Europe. In acknowledgment of his Himalaya expeditions in 1930 and 1934, he and his wife Hettie Dyhrenfurth received the Prix olympique d’alpinisme within the scope of the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936. His son Norman Günter Dyhrenfurth was also a successful expedition leader in the Himalayas and worked as a cameraman in many mountaineering films.

Source: Andreas Nickel and Jürgen Czwienk: Zum dritten Pol (To the Third Pole). Documentary on the Dyhrenfurth family, Germany, 2007