Four Seasons Des Bergues Hotel

NileGuide Expert tip:

Excellent venue for dining and drinks with amazing views.

Description:

• This elegant, four-story hotel -- designated a historic monument by the Swiss -- once catered to the monarchs of Europe. After being conglomerated into the luxury Canadian hotel chain, Four Seasons, a massive renovation downsized 122 rooms to 103 even more spacious rooms. It is now the most ostentatiously elegant hotel in Geneva, with a gigantic operating budget that's the envy of other equally venerable but less well-funded nearby competitors (though the reopening of Le Richemond could give it a run for its money).

  Stratospherically expensive, with an armada of uniformed and sometimes obsequiously polite staff members, the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues is a favorite with the haute international business community, diplomats, and members of European society. It has long been ranked by Institutional Investor as one of the world's top hotels. The hotel's impressive guest list has included Jean Cocteau, the duke of Edinburgh, the queen of Spain, Edward VIII, the queen of Hawaii, and Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elizabeth ("Sissi") of Austria. Grandly memorable from its centrally located position at the edge of the Rhône, the hotel also hosted many meetings of the League of Nations. During World War II it was known as the "hotel of the Allies," having played host to so many Allied leaders.

  Since its widely publicized refurbishment, the hotel's public rooms are among the most lavish in Switzerland. The bedrooms have Directoire and Louis Philippe furnishings. Accommodations ranked "superior" on the Bel Étage floor are the finest choices here, although all units are beautifully appointed. Lake-view rooms are more expensive. The hotel shelters one of the classiest dining venues in Geneva: Il Lago, whose appointments and murals of an idealized lakefront in northern Italy are simply the most beautiful of their kind anywhere.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Very Highly Recommended 2010