Page 14 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

And of course, the beautiful music marquee had been built for them, to
here for the first time. And yet, more than any other type of public
enable them to listen to open-air concerts at teatime or in the early evening, building, hotels were constantly having to evolve: new managers
just like in Nice or Monte Carlo. And our streets were kept meticulously and directors replaced the old, bringing new agendas to reorganise
clean and tidy, with every last paper wrapper and tin can swept up, so and restructure the premises (figs 4 and 5). These perpetual agents
that nothing could offend their eyes or nostrils, nor give rise to the slightest of change also asserted their authority by imposing their particular
criticism or the tiniest regret for having come to Montreux to spend their managerial vision on the ‘steamships of the town’, as Léon-Paul Fargue
precious money. How many servants, of all kinds, had to be employed to and Pierre Sansot described them. This resulted in the progressive
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ensure that all of the foreigners were truly satisfied! My father called it “the erosion of the buildings’ substance and character, especially the
great Swiss army dedicated to serving foreigners”.’ 4 opulent yet fragile interior decor which Catherine Schmutz and
While the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Fabienne Hoffmann discuss with specific reference to the Beau-
saw luxury hotel construction reach its zenith, there were also Rivage Palace. Another example is the chequered history of one
growing rumblings of dissent, as Roland Flückiger-Seiler explains. of the hotel’s bars, which was built in 1938 and modified several
The speech delivered by Georges de Montenach to the Fourth times before finally being demolished in 1955. After over a century
International Congress of Public Art in Brussels, October 1910 of untimely transformations, the hotel slowly began to realise that
encapsulates the mood: ‘[…] we must halt the invasion of the hotels, its history was a marketable commodity giving ‘added value’ to its
these huge international caravanserai which multiply in the most beautiful core identity, and that it could appeal as much to guests as the latest
spots, and which, by their very presence, destroy all sense of unity, crushing mod cons. When the Beau-Rivage Palace was awarded the icomos
our rural towns and villages with their awkward proportions and enormous (International Council on Monuments and Sites) ‘Historic Hotel of
height and ruining their charm for ever. It is important that the hotel the Year’ prize in 1999, the architect Aurelio Galfetti concluded
industry reverts to better architectural traditions and strives to meet the his speech with the following words: ‘In a certain sense, our most
needs of modern tourists while respecting the overall aesthetic of our towns, important hotel buildings are a “composite portrait” of our own country’s
in order to avoid the brutal violations which cause irreversible scarring of the highs and lows. If we know how to “read” these buildings properly, they
kind which has been inflicted on some of our most beautiful scenery.’ 5 will give us a detailed account not only of their history, but of the history
Montenach, like many others including Philippe Godet, of the entire country. We must take action to ensure that this history is not
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Guillaume Fatio, and the architect Charles Melley, was targeting erased.’ If we agree with Joseph Roth and Vicki Baum that hotels
a two-headed monster: capitalism, whose new technologies, are a microcosm of society, ‘little countries’ and ‘worlds in miniature’,
factories, soulless rental apartments, luxury hotels, stations the disruptions they suffer take on a new significance, as in the case
and casinos were ruining the towns and countryside, and of the Hotel Colón in Barcelona, the scene of an important ‘act’ in
internationalism, whose revolutionary tendencies and disregard the Spanish Revolution of 1936: ‘[…] as if, aside from the repose of
for the past were endangering the patriotic ideal of the Swiss the exhausted millionaires, the great hotels had been conceived only to be
national identity. periodically requisitioned by more or less provisional governments, and their
The timeless atmosphere of the Beau-Rivage Palace comes bathtubs alternately filled by the waxed bodies of Argentinian dowagers
across again and again in its guestbooks. It is almost as if the hotel and police dossiers’. 9
were caught in a time warp: ‘The Beau-Rivage hasn’t changed in 54 Whereas the Neoclassical facade of the first Beau-Rivage
years’ wrote one enthusiastic guest in 1991. This refusal to bow to building, located to the north of a wooded plot of land facing the
time is explored by Michel Braudeau in his short story, published lake, was originally set off by a beautiful Romantic style park, the
Fig. 5
The foyer of the Beau-Rivage shrouded in scaffolding during
the major building works of 1997-2000.
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