Hotel Waldhaus

Nietzsche lived in Sils Maria and it's tempting to imagine he'd have approved of the Waldhaus — a fin-de-siècle palace perched on a hill above the village, defiantly un-renovated in the best possible way. Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Marc Chagall were all guests. The hotel has been in the same family since it opened in 1908, and it preserves a deliberately old-fashioned atmosphere: no background music, no spa fads, just a superb library, a grand salon for afternoon tea, and the kind of civilised quiet that is increasingly rare. 140 rooms, surrounded by forests and the wild beauty of the Engadine.