Maloja Palace

Geschichte

The Maloja Palace is a hotel located 15 km (9.3 mi) from St Moritz, Switzerland, (in the canton Graubünden between the Engadine and the Bregell valley). The hotel was built between 1882 and 1884 by Count Camille of Renesse-Breidbach (9 July 1836 – 12 June 1904) following the designs of the Belgian architects Kuoni and Jules Rau in the Neo-Renaissance style, and was opened on 1 July 1884.

At the time, the building had five floors with 300 rooms and about 450 beds as well as 20 public rooms for dining or dancing. The Maloja Palace had a nine-hole golf course, two tennis courts and a darsena for rowing and sailing boats. Among its many famous guests, the hotel mentions the names of Mr Hennessy, the baron L.W. Rothschild, Arturo Toscanini and Lady Churchill.

However, the hotel enterprise had to announce banckupcy only five months after its opening as cholera had broken out in neighbouring Italy. The hotel subsequently reopened with various owners until 1934. In the following decades the gigantic hotel served the Swiss army which conducted refresher courses there.

In 1962, the hotel was owned by Maloja AG, in which the Belgian health insurance scheme Mutualité Chrétienne had a majority holding. It leased the hotel complex to the Intersoc operating company. Since that time the hotel has served as a warehouse, a children's holiday home and holiday accommodation for mainly Belgian youth groups. Nevertheless, since the 1980s when the house was used to capacity, its bookings have steadily decreasing as a result of the lack of popularity of large-capacity, military-like establishments coupled with the cancelation of the night train between Brussels and Chur Besides, like other Belgian health insurance schemes, "Mutualité chrétienne" ran into financial difficulties caused in part by high renovation costs.

In January 2006, the Italian entrepreneur Amedeo Clavarino bought the venue and after extensive renovation work the Maloja Palace was reopened in 2009 as a four-star hotel with 50 suites and 130 rooms, a wellness centre, a ballroom and dining rooms for 700 persons.

Every winter the Engadin Skimarathon competition starts at the entrance of the hotel.