Piz Gloria

Geschichte

Piz Gloria is the name of the revolving restaurant on the Schilthorn near Mürren in the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland. The cable car station and the restaurant were designed by the Bernese architect, Konrad Wolf. The Piz Gloria restaurant claims to be the world's first revolving restaurant, although others already existed, such as the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., which opened during the 1962 World's Fair. Given the difficult topographic and climatic conditions, construction units were prefabricated. The outer skin of the glass circular upper floor is of aluminium-skinned wooden panels, that originally was an aluminium-coated tent roof. The rotative mechanism — a 12m-diameter core with a 3.0m annulus that completely rotates the upper floor in approximately an hour — allows every guest to have a view. In 1990, the restaurant was enlarged to accommodate some 400 diners, while retaining its original architectural character.The name Piz Gloria originated in Ian Fleming's James Bond novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), in which it is the mountain-top hideout of the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld and contains an allergy clinic. In the story the implied location is near St Moritz, where Romansh is spoken and "piz" is a local term for a mountain peak. But the restaurant is actually located in the Bernese Oberland, where Romansh is not spoken.