It was my mother who introduced me to the thrill of abandoned buildings. Her preference was for large houses with glamorous histories, like Encombe, for example, which was a mile from where we lived in Folkestone. Following several landslides in the 1950s, the house became uninhabitable.
Mum would instruct dad to detour into the hills above Sandgate so she (and later I) could determine how the former villa was faring and how much more of the central staircase had collapsed since our last visit.
Dad always stayed in the car. He warned my mother that she was breaking and entering, thereby risking arrest. Later his concerns focussed on our physical safety: what if we were hit, even killed, by falling plaster and brickwork?.
But the magic of Encombe, an Italianate villa with arched loggias and uninterrupted views across the English Channel, proved too compelling to resist.
It finally burned to the ground in 1978.
Last month, on a family holiday in the Ticino, I was delighted to discover that the Grand Hotel Locarno, which opened in 1876 and closed in 2005, was directly opposite where we were staying. The pink neoclassical building, which lies in extensive gardens and overlooks Lago Maggiore, hosted the Peace Conference of Locarno in 1925. Renovation work is underway and the hotel will reopen in 2027.
I took my chances at the end of the day – after the construction workers had left and before the gates were locked for the night – to wander around the hotel’s former wine cellars; all dripping arches, stone steps and wrought-iron balustrades.
The Grand Hotel is famous for its murano glass chandelier, the largest of its kind in Europe. Astonishingly, when the hotel closed twenty years ago, the chandelier was left behind. An online news clip from 2024 shows a group of lab-coated, hard-hatted experts with clip boards, carefully dismantling the undisturbed work of art, piece by glass piece, to be sent away and restored.
It is this aspect of Switzerland’s abandoned hotels that I find most baffling. Why are there no looters and scavengers? Where are the souvenir hunters? In England empty buildings are quickly stripped of anything of value, including the lead and tiles on the roof. A priceless murano chandelier would have disappeared before the heat in the walls had had a chance to escape.
A remarkable example of a sleeping beauty is the Royal Park Hotel Bellevue in Kandersteg in the Bernese Oberland. Built in 1905, it featured as the smallest hotel in the directory of ‘Small Luxury Hotels of the World’. I first noticed the chalet-style building during a weeklong visit to Kandersteg in 2018. The hotel sign was overgrown and the parking lot was empty, which struck me as unusual for the month of August. There were no barriers, no ‘Keep Out’ signs and none of the windows were boarded up. No harm in trying the front door, then.
My husband pointed out that the Swiss arrested people for misdemeanours less serious than trespassing. I knew he was right, but I couldn’t help myself and I promised him I wouldn’t go upstairs.
By the pool, which has uninterrupted mountain views, stood a row of white loungers and greek urns. The water was brown. Dead leaves lay scattered on the deck. The staircase to the upper floors looked safe but a lack of electricity in the building and my promise to Dan kept me from climbing the stairs to the bedrooms.
In 2011, the Royal Park Hotel Bellevue closed its doors citing a decline in the number of visitors. The building lay empty for several years and was then bought by Daniel Filliger, an architect from Spiez.
I asked a restaurant owner in the village what plans there were for the hotel. None, he replied. The Royal Park, along with 164 other buildings in Kandersteg, lies in the direct path of the Spitzer Stein, an unstable rock formation that risks burying the village in 18 million cubic meters of rock and stone. As a result of global warming the permafrost is constantly expanding and contracting inside the broken rock, creating additional flood risks.
There are weekly reports on the state of the Spitzer Stein. During the summer months it can move up to 50 cms a day. The owners of buildings that fall within the so-called red zone may not extend, renovate or alter their properties in any way. For a village that relies almost entirely on tourism, this restriction carries heavy consequences.
In February 2025, Daniel Filliger gave permission for freelance photographer Thomas Hodel to spend a day inside the hotel.* (see link below)
The building has lain empty for almost 15 years and yet the whole place is intact, as if new guests are expected at any moment. At Reception a wooden cabinet holds old-style room keys. Only three of the 31 are missing. In the dining room lies tarnished silver cutlery and behind the bar, sit half-empty bottles of whisky and Armagnac. In the laundry room there are sheets, waiting to be washed. The rooms are full of French and Italian-style furniture, chandeliers, paintings and satin bed covers, stretched immaculately across gilded bed frames.
What is to become of it all?
I suppose the people of Kandersteg have more pressing concerns than worrying about the contents of an old hotel. It seems wasteful though. Clearly none of the objects are considered to be of value to their owners, current or previous. No sale or auction is planned and you can’t just wander in and pocket an old room key because, well, that would be stealing.
Switzerland’s most famous sleeping beauty is the Hotel Belvedere. It sits on a hairpin bend on the Furka Pass and featured in the James Bond film Goldfinger.
In 1964 the Belvedere stood right at the edge of the glacier and visitors came from far and wide to see the ice fields from their bedroom windows. As a result of rising temperatures, however, the glacier has retreated so far uphill that it can no longer be seen from the hotel. Up to five acres of the Rhone glacier are now covered in UV-resistant thermal blankets in an attempt to slow the ice melt.
Local residents say the practice is working, but, it’s too late for the Belvedere, which closed its doors in 2015.
*https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/kandersteg-ein-blick-in-das-verlassene-fuenfsternehotel-584102481649