Zurich is a still-waters-run-deep kind of place, full of paradoxes and surprises. Outwardly, the central police station is unremarkable. Inside, its walls and ceilings are covered in frescos by Augusto Giacometti, as rich and vibrant and velvety as a rose garden in full bloom. How much more mixed can civic messages get? The building itself plays both good cop and bad cop: you’re under arrest, but you have the right to remain exquisite.
A few hundred yards away, the Baur au Lac, loveliest of the city’s hotels (and a much nicer place to spend the night than the police station, despite the frescos), embodies one or two paradoxes and surprises of its own.
The ‘Baur’ in its name came from its proprietor, Johannes Baur, who built the hotel in 1844. The ‘au Lac’ described its location close to the shore of Lake Zurich and distinguished it from its sister property, the Baur en Ville, which had opened six years earlier, on Paradeplatz. So far, so unparadoxical and unsurprising.
Baur’s contemporaries thought he’d lost his mind. A hotel not merely on the lake, but also facing the lake, with snowcapped mountains in the distance? Verrückt! Sublime vistas of that kind simply weren’t a thing in those days. The Alpinism craze hadn’t taken off yet and conventional wisdom held that a Swiss city hotel either faced the city centre or imminent closure. Yet Baur was on to something. His guests quickly acquired a taste for the hotel’s unusual situation and orientation, as well as for its aura of leafy, marbled, Italianate lusciousness — a definition of the grand hotel as we’ve come to understand it.
More than 180 years later, the Baur au Lac is run by the same family — now the Krachts, after a Baur married a Kracht. Its ongoing appeal has to do entirely with the Krachts’ hands-on approach. They’ve tirelessly tweaked and compulsively adjusted to make sure the place remains fresh and relevant. Gigi Kracht (sixth generation) has done a huge amount to align the hotel with the city’s contemporary art scene — without dispensing with the Gobelin tapestries, Chinese vases or the perfect little oak-framed kiosk in the lobby.
Martin Brudnizki’s glow-up of Baur’s Bar & Brasserie was a smash hit — so much so that he was subsequently entrusted to repeat the miracle on the Michelin-starred Pavillon restaurant. Rechristened Marguita in honour of two members of the Kracht family (fifth and seventh generations), it’s surely the most joyful dining room in the city, with a carefree, tousle-haired, lemon-scented whiff of Positano about it.
The fact that the lake and the Alps are in one direction and the spires of the Fraumünster and Grossmünster in the other only adds to the thrilling sense of incongruity.
Rooms at Baur au Lac start from from CHF1050 (about £980) per night on a room-only basis. Visit the hotel website for more information and to book.