Grace La Margna review: Art Nouveau meets new wave glamour
Rosie Paterson visits the first five-star hotel to open in St Moritz, Switzerland, in half a century.
St Moritz has never been short of five-star hotels — Kulm, Badrutt’s Palace, Suvretta… to name just a few — so when Grace La Margna marched into town in 2022 it wasn’t just determined to make a splash, it needed to.
A two minute walk from the station, it is wonderfully placed for arriving by train (and why, given the chance, wouldn’t you make the most of Switzerland’s gloriously efficient rail network?) and, more importantly, feels like a hotel designed for the St Moritz of today rather than its gilded past.
The first five-star offering to open in the Swiss resort for half a century, the Grace is a study in contemporary alpine design and art. Whereas St Moritz’s other grande dames embrace Gothic grandeur, the Grace is fresher and more obviously cool — it feels less like a palace and more like a stylish private members’ club.
Art doesn’t simply hang on the hotel’s walls — it is woven into its identity. Jurg Kaufmann’s Engadin alpine photography series is on permanent display, and a collaboration with Pietro Terzini saw his graffiti-inspired scrawls projected onto the building’s facade.
The newer Grace wing — home to Kaufmann’s creations — houses the hotel’s most modern and more compelling rooms (above). The view from the floor-to-ceiling windows is of Lake St Moritz — frozen in the winter and flecked with sailing boats in the summer — so that the room becomes a frame for the Engadin rather than a retreat from it.
And then there is La Margna wing — an Art Nouveau landmark with its distinctive cherry-red shutters. My Junior Suite was softer than its Grace Wing counterpart with a weighty faux-fur bedspread the colour of caramel, a long bathroom in tonal shades of more warm beige and flattering lighting (below). Frette bed linen and a complimentary mini bar are included as standard, and four-legged friends — and there are lots of them in St Moritz; you can see some pictures of our favourites here — are welcome in all room categories, except for La Margna Superior ones.
There is a Beefbar in London too, at Broadwick Soho.
Back downstairs there’s a Beefbar outpost (joining siblings in Monte-Carlo and Saint-Tropez), which offers up something entirely different to the venison and fondue-heavy menus of some of the more traditional restaurants, and a fantastic bar. There are live DJ sets and a tarot-inspired cocktail list (although they make a mean gin gimlet; order alongside a plate of late-night fries) and it’s busy most evenings in a ‘I’m in the right place’ kind of way, as opposed to a ‘I cannot move, get me out of here’ one…
The tension between what people expect to find in St Moritz and what Grace has built has been a part of its appeal since the very beginning — and the old guard are starting to follow in its footsteps. Open year-round, other hotels are now starting to close later in the winter and open earlier in the summer. The Kulm and its friends still rule the mountain, but Grace La Margna is proof that St Moritz is ready for what comes next.
Rooms from £550 a night on a bed-and-breakfast basis. Visit the Grace La Margna website for more information and to book.
