Gstaad Palace

Built by a schoolteacher. Kept by one family. Pool since 1928.

In December 1904 the railway climbed up from Lake Geneva into Gstaad, a farming village in the high Swiss meadows. The person who understood what it meant was not a hotelier. Robert Steffen was the village schoolteacher. He bought land on the hill above, found investors in Lausanne, and in December 1913 opened a palace with 165 rooms and central heating. The village had cowbells. The hotel had a telegrapher.

Fifteen years later, in 1928, the village hoteliers put in the water: a 50-meter open-air pool more than 3,300 feet up, drawn by the Swiss pool pioneer Beda Hefti. It was built for the village as much as for the guests, and locals still swim beside the people in the rooms.

The pool opens in the last week of June and closes at the end of August, on the days the weather holds. The water is heated to about 73°F. The air above it is not. On a cold morning the surface steams, and the peaks at the end of the valley keep their chill all summer. Springboards stand at one and three meters, a diving tower at five. From the top, the water is a long blue rectangle and the meadows run up on every side. Some of what is swimming in it is ours. For almost ten years TRUE TRIBE has made the Palace a swim short of its own, with the hotel's emblem embroidered on the leg.

The hotel passed to the people who ran it. Ernst and Silvia Scherz took over as directors in 1938, and a year later war closed the borders. Silvia ran the hotel almost alone and raised chickens in the garden while Ernst guarded the frontier with the Swiss army. Under the terrace, a Swiss bank built a strong room for gold and papers. It serves fondue now, as La Fromagerie. In 1947 a speculator bought a large block of shares. Ernst, backed by friends and the village doctor, bought them back, and the family has owned the Palace since. Andrea Scherz, the third generation, has run it since 2001. The house tells it that Michael Jackson once tried to buy the place and was turned down.

The hotel keeps two seasons, snow from mid-December to mid-March, lakes and trails from late June to early September. In between it closes, and the hill goes back to the village.

Higher up, at 5,600 feet, the hotel runs the Walig Hut, a cowherds' dairy built in 1783. The walk from the hotel takes about three hours. It sleeps one family at a time. Dinner is at sunset, on the terrace while the light lasts and by candle once it goes.