The cool new mountain hotels making the Swiss Alps a stylish destination

Tales abound of how three of Switzerland's great peaks got their names. The favourite one involves an ogre who tried to seduce a young maiden, before a kindly monk intervened and an old sorcerer turned all three of them to stone. There is poetic licence here, for sure. The origins of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau are undoubtedly more prosaic, but who can deny a fairy-tale narrative for such a revered and magical landscape? Wengen, one of several villages and hamlets laying claim to a backdrop of these mighty peaks, is perhaps the ultimate picture-book destination. It clings as tightly to the Swiss Alpine vernacular of decorative wooden chalets, heart shapes and lace curtains as it does to the mountainside, up which chugs a yellow, cogwheel train - the only way in and out for residents and tourists alike.

At the western end of the village, however, change is afoot - less of a wind of change than a gentle breeze, blowing new life and a new look into one of its oldest establishments. The Grand Hotel Belvedere - aptly named for its astonishing views down the Lauterbrunnen valley - has been swept up by Beaumier, the hotel group that owns, among others, Les Roches Rouges in Saint-Raphael and Le Moulin in Provence. As part of the package came the nearby Hotel Wengener Hof, the two now becoming one, joined by a tunnel underground and landscaped gardens above.

The bedrooms are where the new really kicks in: 90 in total and redesigned from scratch, in part to provide a uniformity across both buildings, in part to introduce a retro 1970s look (how the wheel of fashion turns), defined by the olive greens and toffee browns of locally sourced stone and wood. Most striking of all is the new spa, brutalist in its angular, raw-stone simplicity, which must have had Wengen's old guard reaching for their schnapps.

The Grand Hotel Belvedere is a five-star property, Wengen's first in fact, and with that comes a certain sense of propriety. On the opposite side of Lauterbrunnen valley, in the mountain village of Mürren, the French/Moroccan creative polymath Ramdane Touhami does not give a fig about stars. He opened Drei Berge Hotel in December 2023 in the former Hotel Bellevue. He, too, has followed a 1970s aesthetic, packing the place with personality and passion, pushing the boundary of Swiss tradition to its limit, and introducing a distinctly Wes Anderson vibe with the forest green exterior and candy-cane-striped shutters. His crowd is a younger, less affluent and more fashion-conscious one, hence his latest collaboration with his close friends Aaron Aujla and Emily Adams Bode Auila, the duo behind New York fashion brand Bode.