Le Mirador Resort & Spa

Ravel, Dutilleux and the musicians

Before it was a grand hotel, the place was a clinic. In 1934 the French composer Maurice Ravel, already affected by illness, stayed at the Mon-Repos medical establishment, on the Mont-Pèlerin. As if to carry on that musical tradition, the composer Henri Dutilleux would in turn find at the Mirador the calm that suited composition.

To this day, Montreux Jazz Festival artists set down their bags here, far from the bustle of the waterfront: such was the case for Lady Gaga and Ava Max.

From Mon-Repos to the Mirador

The building was born in 1904 as Mon-Repos, a medical establishment that the architect J.-H. Collombet took care not to give the coldness of clinics, since it was meant for patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Closed after the war, it was reborn in 1952 as a hotel, bought by André Kurz.

In 1969 the American entrepreneur Joseph Segel, who had fallen in love with the country, bought the Mon-Repos and renamed it Hôtel Le Mirador. A pioneer, he opened one of the region’s first spas there as early as 1974, and from 1975 to 1983 the Harvard Business School set up its European campus here. In 1995 the Mirador joined the Leading Hotels of the World and welcomed the famous bronze statues of the American artist J. Seward Johnson. In 1998 it even tried to become Europe’s first non-smoking hotel, an idea abandoned six months later.

Having become Le Mirador Kempinski in 2003, the hotel regained its independence in 2015, before being bought in 2016 by the Chinese group Citychamp Dartong.

A belvedere above the lake

The Mirador is reached from Vevey by a funicular that climbs through the vineyards. From the terrace of the five-star hotel, the curve of Lake Geneva gives an impression of the open sea, away from the bustle of the plain.

That calm and those limited access points make it a favourite of diplomacy: fully privatised, the Mirador hosted the Cyprus peace talks in November 2016 and again in January 2017, under the aegis of the UN and opened by its Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The Dalai Lama, visiting the nearby Tibetan centre of Mont-Pèlerin, also stayed here.