Hotel Schweizerhof Lucerne

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Hotel Schweizerhof Lucerne
city Lucerne , Switzerland
address Schweizerhofquai 2–4, 6002 Lucerne
Website www.schweizerhof-luzern.ch
Hotel information
opening August 21, 1845
owner Hauser family
management Clemens Hunziker
Classification 5
Awards Tripadvisor Traveller's Choice Award: 2018
Luxury Cultural Hotel of Europe: 2017
Condé Nast Traveler Readers Choice Award: 2017
Best historic Hotel of Europe: 2016
Milestone Award: 2014
Furnishing
room 101
Restaurants 3
Bars 1
Photo of the hotel

Coordinates: 47 ° 3 '16.4 "  N , 8 ° 18' 36.6"  E ; CH1903:  666218  /  211870

The Hotel Schweizerhof Luzern is a five-star hotel in Lucerne . It stands near the shore of Lake Lucerne on the Schweizerhofquai . The hotel was built in 1845, has been continuously expanded over the years and has been owned by the Hauser family since 1861. The hotel is one of the few in Switzerland that is a cultural asset of national importance and is a listed building. Most of the original architecture has been preserved to this day.

history

Planning and construction

At the beginning of the 19th century, the city of Lucerne looked for a new trade and discovered tourism . In 1835 the first panoramic hotel on Lake Lucerne was opened, the Hotel Schwanen . With the construction of the hotel and the urban development of Lucerne, Schwanenplatz became a new transport hub. In 1836, the Lucerne city council commissioned the architect Melchior Berri for the further development . He suggested that the covered courtyard bridge running along the bank should be demolished and the lake should be filled. Five large buildings and a clear shoreline as well as the offset road to the Hofkirche were to be built on the new area . Despite the great public interest in the project, it was not implemented due to lack of financial resources.

On September 9, 1843, the clerk at the time, Josef Franz Lorenz Segesser , petitioned the Lucerne city council. He asked the authorities to determine a building line for the creation of an inn on Seegestade. His son Xaver is willing to build a new restaurant on the planned quay. The four sons Josef Plazidius, Heinrich, Xaver and Eduard Segesser submitted a first building application to the city council on October 17, 1843, as well as a site plan for the bank area. On November 30, 1843, the corporation congregation ceded the section of the lake in front of their newly acquired property for filling. In March 1844, the client, Melchior Berri, received the building permit and began work immediately. The topping-out of today's main building was celebrated on September 23, 1844 . The backfilling of the lakeshore strip for the Schweizerhof left serious damage to the Hofbrücke. A few days before the new hotel opened, another part of the bridge was demolished following a dispute between the builders and the city council. In return, the Segesser brothers undertook to create a drivable road with a sidewalk. The hotel finally opened on August 21, 1845.

Attachments and conversions

The Schweizerhofquai , on which the Hotel Schweizerhof is located, between 1890 and 1900

In the following years, the bank area was gradually expanded by means of embankments and a quay wall with parapets was built. At the end of 1854, the last part of the Hofbrücke was demolished and the remaining part of the Seegestade was filled up until around 1860, whereby the Schweizerhofquai was extended to the Kurplatz. During this time Eduard Segesser took over the Schweizerhof as the sole owner. Between 1854 and 1856 he had a dependence - so-called auxiliary building - built on the western and eastern sides.

In 1861 the hotel became the property of the Hauser family. As a third construction phase, the brothers Gottfried, Johann and Albert Hauser wanted to add a large dining room, which was previously missing, and a kitchen wing. They commissioned the German architect Gottfried Semper (1803–1879), who submitted plans for the buildings as well as for the conditional new construction of the central staircase. The clients rejected the project - on the grounds of a bad business year in the 1862 season - and rewarded Semper. Meanwhile, the Hauser brothers got in touch with the Zurich architect Leonhard Zeugheer (1812–1866), who designed a project that was well received by the builders and to which the city council granted the building permit on November 12, 1863. The hall and winter garden were opened on June 1, 1865 after three years of construction. At the opening, the guest French Empress Eugénie praised the fact that even in France there were few more beautiful halls.

In the years 1868/69 the main building and the annexes were renovated and modernized according to plans by Adolph Brunner (1837–1909). So the blinds were replaced by what were then modern shutters . The connection between the main building and the dépendances was to be made with pasarelles that had been planned earlier. The pasarelle to the eastern dépendance was realized during the renovation, the one to the western one followed in 1881. In addition, the owners had a front garden with a stone balustrade and gas candelabra laid out.

From 1882 onwards, the architect Arnold Bringolf-Hauser (1851–1946), who was related to the Hauser brothers, was the hotel's “court architect”. In 1885 he changed the main building from a classicist palace to a neo-baroque palace: further guest rooms, dining and lounge areas were created. A spacious hotel hall with neo-baroque stucco marble columns and electric Art Nouveau lights was created in the main corridor on the ground floor . The staircase with marble-clad steps has been restored in the Louis-Seize style. The main building received an additional fourth floor with new guest rooms and a mansard roof . A dome with a roof terrace was placed above the central risalit . In 1887, according to Bringolf-Hauser's plan, the so-called small hall was built east of the main building and the large hall. To the south of this hall, another hall, today's Restaurant Galerie, was added in 1896. In the course of the expansion, a storage and workshop building was built in 1897, the small hall was extended with additional guest rooms in 1901/1902, an economic building with stables was added in 1904 and an extension to the eastern branch was built in 1905. Further construction activity dried up with the decreasing flow of tourists at the beginning of the First World War . During the Second World War , military personnel from staff departments were housed in the hotel and the terrace of the Schweizerhof was used for military weather forecasts .

Further development

In autumn 1945 the Hauser family decided to modernize the quarters and buildings of the employees and to convert the guest rooms into modern apartments. On behalf of the federal government, architect Armin Meili had to prepare a study of the structural condition and possible renovations of hotels and health resorts during the Second World War . Meili recommended "cleaning the building of the inexpedient and ugly ingredients from the end of the last century". Contrary to the recommendation of the preservation authorities and in accordance with the study, the architect Adolf Vallaster removed the dome and redesigned the neo-baroque facade in a purifying renovation in 1954/1955. The Schweizerische Bauzeitung condemned the redesign. The renovation work on the main building was completed in 1961 with the opening of a new terrace café. Vallaster carried out another purification on the two dépendances from 1962 to 1964. This renovation phase was completed in 1979/80 with the addition of a kitchen behind the eastern branch by the architects Andy Raeber & Hugo Sieber and the construction of the Rotonde restaurant by the architects Ammann and Baumann .

A feasibility study from 1994 was of the opinion that, for financial reasons, among other things, keeping the halls would not make sense. Business economists and hotel experts also expressed the same opinion. The owner family, Hauser, therefore pursued a realignment of the hotel and in 1995 invited a study. The concept at that time envisaged the demolition of the rear halls - large and small hall. The preservation of monuments, the Lucerne City Planning Commission, the Central Swiss Homeland Security and a citizens' movement campaigned for the Hauser family, as builders, to preserve the halls and restore the large hall. The application of the cantonal monument commission for protection as well as an expert opinion of the federal commission for the preservation of monuments , which classifies the interior of the Schweizerhof as nationally important, also contributed. The Hauser family and the Lucerne city council agreed that the building contractor should examine projects in a procedure similar to that of a competition, in which either economically sensible possibilities for the maintenance of the halls should be shown or it should be proven that the preservation of the halls is economical and / or architectural is not useful. The design - the main building with the large and small halls as well as the two annexes were to be retained - by the Basel architects Diener & Diener did justice to the operational, urban development and monument conservation requirements . From February 1998 the hotel was temporarily closed. During the renovation, the kitchen and the outbuildings with laundry were demolished, as were the workshops on Hertensteinstrasse and at the Matthäuskirche and, due to the access to the new underground car park , the winter garden. The wall between the large hall and the kitchen was torn down and replaced by a facade that is a copy of the opposite wall. The winter garden was rebuilt with existing parts such as parquet , paneling, stucco, windows with etched panes and ceiling glass paintings. The interior has either been restored or modernized. Much of the original furniture has been preserved in the halls, while some of the rooms are only unique. The reopening was celebrated on December 15, 1999.

Between 2006 and 2008 the restaurants Galerie, Pavillon and Schweizerhof Bar were again comprehensively renovated. In 2010 there was a reduction from 107 to 101 rooms and suites with the simultaneous construction of a small wellness and beauty area. In 2013 and 2014, all rooms were renovated in two stages. Also in 2014, salons 2 and 11 and the bring golf hall were redesigned.

description

Roland Flückiger describes the Schweizerhof as "one of the most valuable hotel complexes from the heyday of Swiss tourism in the 19th century".

main building

The foundation building with a rectangular floor plan is described as a late classical palace . Running parallel to the shore line, the building is fifteen window axes long and five wide. It is divided into four full floors and one attic floor with a balustrade under hipped roofs . The main facade is adorned with a five-axis risalit the width of the attic. The three upper floors of the risalit are grouped together by a flat, colossal arrangement of six pilasters . The entrance area, which also forms the main entrance, is a three-axis portico with a round-arched central portal and two adjacent rectangular doors with four Doric columns in front. During the expansions in 1868/69, the facade decoration was enriched and a blind gable was built over the attic of the central projectile. Further baroque elements on the facade and additional balconies were added during the expansion in 1885/86.

Inside, six steps lead to a vestibule , where on the one hand a three-flight main staircase continues and on the other hand narrow corridors lead to rear exits. Central corridors are connected to both sides of the square vestibule. The corridor leading to the west leads to the servants' rooms such as the host's living room, the laundry room, a dining room and lounge for servants as well as the main kitchen with ancillary rooms. The eastern corridor leads to the main dining room, the small dining room, the coffee and reading room, and an office.

Dependencies

At a distance of 18 meters from the main building, the free-standing dependencies were built on both sides. The rectangular buildings are nine axes long, five axes wide and the same height as the main building. They are divided into a high ground floor, a mezzanine and three upper floors, which are closed off by a hipped roof. There are further guest rooms on the upper three floors, while the other rooms were used by the employees. The hip roofs were replaced by mansard roofs in 1898 .

Great Hall

The great hall around 1891

In contrast to Gottfried Semper's design, the large hall, also known as the large dining room, ballroom or Zeugheersaal, is not built in the central axis of the hotel, but as an extension of the old hall to the east. The sequence from the old hall via the connecting hall and large hall to the winter garden in the north - which was demolished and rebuilt in 1999 - enabled an escape that shows the generosity of the hotel. Stylistically, the hall is assigned to the neo-renaissance with classicistic reminiscences. After the renovation in 1999, it is 26.7 meters long and 13.7 meters wide - without the entrance hall and winter garden - and the height is between 6.8 and 8.3 meters.

The hall is divided by beams into three compartments, which are laterally on fluted pillars with Corinthian capitals . Identical parts of the room are in front of or behind the square middle part. Arched openings and niches structure all walls. In the niches of the longitudinal walls, four find sculptures made of cast metal . The female figures symbolize harmony ( Concordia with peace bell and gentians in hand and hair), hard work (with beehive and spindle), industry in the form of fishing (with padel and net) and agriculture (with wreath of ears).

A richly profiled console cornice supports the ceiling. In the middle part of the room the cornice bearing a neo-Baroque groove , which in panneaux with Regency is divided -Gitterwerkt. In this there are 3 × 3 large coffered ceilings , which are divided into further 3 × 3 smaller coffers , consisting of plaster stucco and grained . With the exception of the large central case - this has openable glass panels - all are painted green and decorated with gold stars. The large hall has a gable roof with a glass oblicht in the middle.

The interior dates from the 19th century. A central chandelier, pendant lights and wall appliques, all of which were later electrified, illuminated the hall. The surfaces of the hall - fir wood and plaster stucco - have been refined to hardwood and marble by painting . The wooden knee panel is marbled in green , the columns and pillars in red, purple and yellow tones. Arches, niches and cornices are designed in white to grayish marble. The wall fields are worked out in geometric patterns and palmettes with red and light blue fillings. All leaf, decorative and pearl bars are gold-plated. The original painting of the walls was exposed - after several whitewashings - during the major renovation in 1998/1999 by the restoration team around Martin Hüppi from Littau .

Winter garden

Before the renovation by Arnold Bringolf into a massive building with Renaissance and Baroque forms, the original winter garden was rather light, octagonal and had a flat roof. Five of the eight sides were divided by two round arches and the wall to the large hall opened into three higher individual arches. The round arches were supported by fluted quarter or half columns with Corinthian capitals. A windowed dwarf gallery was set up above it . To the flat ceiling , where a large Glasoblicht, which is enclosed by stucco mirror and beams, with a headed consoles occupied throat over. The glass oblicht - signed by the glass painting Karl Wehrli Zurich III - is attached to a steel grille and is made up of small, painted glass panes in a lead network . In almost all windows and doors there were also panes of glass from the same stained glass.

Small Hall

As an independent, single-storey structure, the small hall, which is very similar in floor plan and spatial structure to the large hall, was attached to the main building. The rectangular hall is constructed with an almost square central section and two side sections. A polygon closed on three sides connects to the northern side part. Slightly protruding pilasters , which stand on a base running along all the walls and support an entablature, characterize the wall structure.

Famous guests

Leo Tolstoy wrote the story “ Luzern ” in the Schweizerhof , Richard Wagner completed his opera “ Tristan und Isolde ” in the premises and had met Ludwig II here . Mark Twain stayed at the Schweizerhof during his trip to Switzerland and wrote about it. Other well-known hotel guests included the German Emperor Wilhelm II and the French Empress Eugénie , the Danish poet and writer Hans Christian Andersen , the British Queen Elizabeth II , the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill , the American astronaut Neil Armstrong and the Swiss General Henri Guisan during World War II .

literature

  • Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne. The building history from the foundation until today: architecture, town planning and monument preservation . In: Kantonale Denkmalpflege (Ed.): Yearbook of the Historical Society Lucerne . No. 18 . Lucerne 2000, p. 51-72 .
  • Georg Carlen: The great hall of the Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Society for Swiss Art History (Hrsg.): Art + Architecture in Switzerland (=  Palaces of Historimus ). tape 51 , no. 2 . Bern 2000, p. 64-67 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-394150 .

Web links

Commons : Hotel Schweizerhof Luzern  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. Portrait. Hotel Schweizerhof Luzern, accessed on November 4, 2018 .
  2. A – Objects LU 2018 . Swiss inventory of cultural assets of national importance. In: babs.admin.ch / kulturgueterschutz.ch. Federal Office for Civil Protection FOCP - Department of Cultural Property Protection, January 1, 2018, p. 241, accessed on December 26, 2017 (PDF; 88 kB, updated annually, no changes for 2018).
  3. a b Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 52-54 .
  4. ^ A b c Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 55 .
  5. Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 57 .
  6. ^ A b c Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 59 .
  7. a b c d Georg Carlen: The great hall of the Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Art + Architecture in Switzerland . Booklet: Castles of Historism. S. 64-65 .
  8. a b c d e Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 62-63 .
  9. a b Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 64 .
  10. a b Karl Frey: Room No. 12 for the “Risky Weather Forecast”: Hotel Schweizerhof Luzern . In: Akademia Olten (Hrsg.): Oltner Neujahrsblätter . tape 74 . Olten 2016, p. 88 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-659401 .
  11. ^ Eva auf der Maur: The renovation of the Hotel «Schweizerhof» in Lucerne . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 73 , no. 18 . Zurich 1955, p. 262 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-61907 .
  12. a b c d Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 66-67 .
  13. ^ Georg Carlen: Lucerne as a hotel city . In: Roland Flückiger-Seiler (Hrsg.): Maintaining and running historic hotels, publication of the conference in Lucerne 14.-16. September 1995 . Lucerne 1996, p. 11-14 .
  14. ^ Eva auf der Maur: The renovation of the Hotel «Schweizerhof» in Lucerne . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 73 , no. 18 . Zurich 1955, p. 263 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-61907 .
  15. Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 68-69 .
  16. Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 51 .
  17. Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 70-71 .
  18. Hotel Schweizerhof Luzern opens 101 new opened 101 new hotel rooms and suites Hotel rooms and suites. (PDF; 257 kB) Hotel Schweizerhof Luzern, May 13, 2014, accessed on November 5, 2018 .
  19. ^ Roland Flückiger: Lucerne, Schweizerhofquai 2-4, Hotel Schweizerhof . In: Inventory of the hotel and tourism buildings of the Canton of Lucerne, MS 1998 in the archive of the Cantonal Monument Preservation of Lucerne .
  20. a b Georg Carlen: The great hall of the Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Art + Architecture in Switzerland . Booklet: Castles of Historism. S. 66 .
  21. a b c d e Georg Carlen, Monika Twerenhold: The Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Yearbook of the Historical Society of Lucerne . S. 60-61 .
  22. ^ Georg Carlen: The great hall of the Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne . In: Art + Architecture in Switzerland . Booklet: Castles of Historism. S. 67 .