Why go?<\/p>\n
Art hotels aren\u2019t exactly a new thing, but it took two of Europe<\/a>\u2019s most dynamic gallerists to really nail the concept. Opening in 2019, The Fife Arms<\/a> rapidly became one of the UK\u2019s most sought-after small hotels\u2014partly for its enviable, 16,000-strong collection but also for its artful take on food, Scottish culture, and sheer, arms-wide-open sense of hospitality. Chesa Marchetta is the long-awaited sequel, bringing Manuela and Iwan Wirth\u2019s creative ethos back to their Swiss homeland.<\/p>\n Set the scene<\/p>\n You won\u2019t find many hotels with a dog as affable as Basilica, the black labrador belonging to general manager Federica Bertolini, which will pad over and settle down by your feet at the fireplace, particularly when lunch is served. Guests behave in much the same way, slouching on sofas after a day on the slopes, browsing the art books spread across tables in the main lounge, and helping themselves to something from the cake table. With \u201cThree Little Pigs\u201d planks over the windows, letting in fingers of sunlight, and timber-lined walls, it\u2019s quite the bucolic Swiss chalet scene, apart from the huge metal spider scuttling down the wall\u2014a piece by the late, great Louise Bourgeois. The Wirths\u2019 art collection is spread around the hotel, from the jet-black bronze Santa by Paul McCarthy, standing guard by the entrance, and a set of aluminum luggage by Indian artist Subodh Gupta outside my room to Giacometti sketches and Alpine scenes. At the main door, as if waiting to be let out for a hike, is a 19th-century painting of a well-fed lad ready with his knapsack.<\/p>\n The backstory<\/p>\n Manuela Hauser and Irwin Wirth, the Swiss gallerists behind the ArtFarm collection, are on a roll right now. A flagship gallery is set to open in Mayfair in 2027, along with a debut art space in Palo Alto, California. Those will be followed by another Swiss launch, Hotel Castell, further down the Engadin Valley in Zuoz. But Chesa\u2014their second hotel after 2019\u2019s Fife Arms in Scotland\u2014is a very personal project; a \u201cRosebud\u201d moment that draws on their own history. The building has been here in some shape or form since the 16th century, and was run as a restaurant with rooms for over 60 years by the Godly sisters, Christina and Maria. Anyone and everyone would stop by, including conductor Herbert von Karajan and artist Marc Chagall; Greta Garbo once visited, hidden behind huge sunglasses, to drink tea quietly in one corner. And it\u2019s where Irwin took Manuela for their first date\u2014he\u2019d been coming to the area since he was a boy, hiking the mountains with his father.<\/p>\n The cowshed and hay barn is now the bar, but the farmhouse spirit of the Chesa endures. Inspired by the stube, the traditional Alpine living room\u2014the very definition of cozy, with its timber-wrapped walls and warming stove\u2014the Paris-based LaPlace studio chose furniture from around the region, from a burl-elm 18th-century bed to wardrobes, trunks, and cupboards. Despite just having opened in January 2026, it has a wonderful sense of continuity and having been lived in. \u201cWe never wanted the house to impress; we wanted it to protect,\u201d Luis LaPlace tells me. \u201cThe project was about listening\u2014to the valley, to the wood, to the silence\u2014and allowing the house to remain itself.\u201d<\/p>\n The rooms<\/p>\n To misquote Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, \u201cI love the smell of arve pine in the morning.\u201d You wake up to the scent of the wood, sourced from the region and used to make the paneling and ceilings of all 13 bedrooms, and it follows you around all day. Each bedroom has been individually furnished, with pieces ranging from oxblood-red chests and thick-cut bed frames to claw-foot lamps and chubby, boucle-clad club chairs. Bobble-edged lace curtains were made by nuns in a nearby convent, while blankets are from a local weaving collective. (The Valencia metro tiles lining the bathrooms are just about the only element intruding from the outside world.) Like the rest of the spaces, the bedrooms act as miniature galleries for the Wirths\u2019 collection\u2014mine had snowflakes stenciled on the rough white walls and 19th-century mountain scenes; Gerhard Richter\u2019s pencil drawings of Sils can be found in the family suite on the top floor.<\/p>\n Food and drink<\/p>\n With his colored beanies, head chef Davide Degiovanni resembles one of Steve Zissou\u2019s Life Aquatic crew\u2014he\u2019s a constant presence around the hotel, from casual lunches served fireside in the lounge to special events in the private dining room. He describes his approach as \u201cmountain-light,\u201d sourcing ingredients from local farmers and nearby Italy to make his signature, buttery gnocchi, blush-red salads of radicchio and barley, and a cavolo nero ragu to twirl pappardelle in. Bergamot scents a dish of Alpine trout and cauliflower pur\u00e9e, while one of his team is a forager from the region, and brings back clutches of pine needles and wild spinach. It\u2019s not always been straightforward\u2014\u201cin Switzerland, it\u2019s easier to buy prawns from Mozambique than fish from a local lake,\u201d the chef remarks\u2014but he\u2019s looking forward to spring and the wild spinach, flowers, and nettles that grow everywhere. Against the rough plaster walls and candlelight of the restaurant, the restaurant dishes resemble still lifes by a Dutch Old Master. Cocktails at the bar also draw on local ingredients, such as the Truffle, made with white rum, black-truffle oil, and honey cordial, and the cacha\u00e7a-based Pumpkin, with grapefruit juice, pumpkin caramel, and cedar tea.<\/p>\n The service<\/p>\n For those used to well-ironed Swiss formality, the Chesa Marchetta crew are refreshingly down to earth, all dressed in orange gingham shirts and gathered up from around Europe\u2014some having worked in The Fife Arms, others from the Engadine region itself. Like the Fife, there\u2019s that easy-going, just-drop-by sense of a welcome, whether you\u2019re here just for a cocktail at the bar or spending several days.<\/p>\n The neighborhood<\/p>\n Neighboring St Moritz was adopted in the 19th century by all those jolly-hockey-stick Brits, who introduced skiing and tobogganing, but little Sils Maria has always been more cerebral. On a hillside above are the turrets of the village\u2019s first hotel, the family-run Waldhaus, which has drawn in Joseph Beuys, Herman Hesse, and David Bowie over the years. Near the Chesa is the war-time home of anti-fascist writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach, and the house where Nietzsche lived for seven years, its windows staring unflinchingly at the sheer peaks opposite, which can be hiked and skied depending on the season. The village of Sils Maria adjoins the village of Sils Baselgia\u2014notable for its golden-spired church\u2014and rather bizarrely the two are separated by a traffic gate. For a primer, watch the 2014 film The Clouds of Sils Maria, starring Juliette Binoche.<\/p>\n Who comes here?<\/p>\n Compared to The Fife Arms, where the clientele is almost all guests, at the Chesa you\u2019re likely to meet several Engadine locals and regular visitors. Salopettes and ski helmets make frequent appearances, along with couples in thick, round spectacles who might be architects\u2014and nearby resident Norman Foster, who most certainly is. I\u2019m sitting at the bar when a man walks in with his family and asks, excitedly, if I skate. \u201cThere\u2019s black ice on the lake\u2014which means it feels like skating on clear water. I\u2019ve been coming here for 50 years, and it\u2019s only happened a handful of times!\u201d<\/p>\n Eco-effort<\/p>\n Salvaged wood has been used wherever possible, while 18 ground-source heat pumps provide energy-efficient heating. Food waste is repurposed for biomass energy in partnership with the village of Sils.<\/p>\n Accessibility<\/p>\n One ground-floor room is fully accessible, and a lift serves all other floors except the suite. The restaurant and bar are also fully accessible.<\/p>\n Anything else to mention?<\/p>\n If Federica\u2019s around, ask her to arrange a walking tour of the village, on which you\u2019ll hear all about the long tradition of patisserie bakers here, the art of sfgraffito\u2014a technique popularized during the Renaissance, etched on house fa\u00e7ades like runes\u2014and visit the lovely library with its collection of writers associated with the area and picture window looking over the lake:\u00a0just the place to sit and write your own novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why go? Art hotels aren\u2019t exactly a new thing, but it took two of Europe\u2019s most dynamic gallerists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17,11108],"class_list":{"0":"post-54069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-switzerland","9":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116452593816651529","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}