Page 15 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace
P. 15

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
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                  precious money. How many servants, of all kinds, had to be employed to   and Pierre Sansot described them.  This resulted in the progressive
                  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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