Fairmont Le Montreux Palace

1906: Eugène Jost’s palace

Commissioned by the hoteliers Alexandre Emery and Ami Chessex, the Montreux Palace was built by the Vaud architect Eugène Jost in barely eighteen months and inaugurated on 19 March 1906. Its Belle Époque façade, its stuccowork and its grand ballroom quickly made it one of the most sought-after palaces on the Riviera.

Nabokov, sixteen years in the Swan Suite (1961-1977)

Vladimir Nabokov, born in 1899 and famous since “Lolita”, settled at the Montreux Palace in 1961, on the advice of the actor Peter Ustinov. The eternal exile, who had moved some forty times, from Berlin to Paris, from Nice to American campuses, would move no more: he lived there for sixteen years, until his death. On the sixth floor, in the Cygne wing, a whole corridor was set aside for the Nabokovs.

It was there that he wrote a burst of masterpieces, “Pale Fire”, “Ada or Ardor” and “Look at the Harlequins!”, and pursued his passion as an entomologist, chasing butterflies on the heights of the Riviera. After two falls, he died on 2 July 1977. A bronze statue now shows him seated in the hotel gardens, his gaze turned towards the lake, the work of the sculptor Rukavishnikov unveiled in 1999 for the centenary of his birth. He rests close by, in the Clarens cemetery.

1967: the festival’s headquarters

Richard Strauss had long been a regular at the Palace. But it was the Montreux Jazz Festival, born in 1967, that made the hotel the legends’ base camp: Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King and so many others stayed there every summer. Quincy Jones, the festival’s musical director in 1991, also had his quarters here.

1967: Joséphine Baker, her husband and her two monkeys

That same year, the revue star Joséphine Baker stayed at the Palace for her show on the stage of the Casino de Montreux. She lived up to her taste for the spectacular: for a meal served in her room she ordered tea, Berliners, bananas and… raw meat.

When the head waiter brought the tray, he found seated the singer, her husband the conductor Jo Bouillon, and two monkeys in checked breeches that she took along on tour (Journal de Montreux).

April 1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Palace

In late April 1969, the most photographed couple in the world checked into the Montreux Palace. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, dressed all in white, came to attend the Rose d’Or, the television festival that screened “Rape”, the film they had made together. Leaving London, they landed in Geneva and then reached the Riviera, where a young Claude Nobs welcomed them at the hotel entrance.

For a few days the Palace became their headquarters: a press conference before a swarm of photographers on 27 April, walks hand in hand in the hotel gardens and through the streets of the town.

Before leaving, John sent a Montreux postcard to his father Freddie and to Pauline in Brighton: “Hello you two! love John”, with a little line self-portrait. Swiss television (the programme Carrefour) filmed their arrival; the commentary, delivered live, was not kept, so the footage has come down to us silent.

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A garden surrounded by legends

Along the garden sloping down to the lake, an avenue of busts pays homage to the festival’s artists: B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Carlos Santana, Ray Charles and Quincy Jones, around the statue of Claude Nobs. A little apart, the bronze statue of Vladimir Nabokov, seated facing the lake, also watches over this garden.

Suite 721, Freddie Mercury’s

Freddie Mercury stayed at the Montreux Palace several times: during the recording of “Jazz”, then in 1982 for “Hot Space” and in 1985 for “A Kind of Magic”. And later still, as a well-known 1990 photograph taken on a hotel balcony with Jim Hutton and Barbara Valentin shows.

He occupied different rooms over his stays. The hotel named a suite after him, number 721, created by the 1981 conversion of the attic, when three suites were fitted out under the roofs. A plaque marks it in the corridor, and it holds several portraits of the singer as well as a genuine autograph. According to his assistant Peter Freestone, on his blog in November 2012, it is the last suite he stayed in.

The hotel bar, today Funky Claude’s Bar, was then called Harry’s Bar: Queen came there to unwind. It was also from the hotel’s first floor, now the breakfast room, that the best-known photograph of the band in Montreux was taken, in 1986.

The Quincy Jones Suite, under the roofs

On the seventh floor, under the attic converted in 1981, the hotel dedicates a second suite to Quincy Jones, a long-time ambassador of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Separate bedroom and living room, contemporary furnishings, a marble bathroom with a Jacuzzi and a Bang & Olufsen sound system: the décor is completed with photographs of the producer, in tribute to his influence on twentieth-century music.

Two private terraces, reached by a lift reserved for the suite, open onto the lake and the Alps: guests take their morning coffee or sunset drink there, with the garden below where Quincy Jones’s bronze bust stands.

1997: Michael Jackson in the Tower Suite

In January 1997, Michael Jackson spent two weeks in the Tower Suite while finishing Blood on the Dance Floor at the neighbouring Mountain Studios, greeting the fans gathered below from his balcony.

Today

The Palace today houses the Montreux Jazz Café and Funky Claude’s Bar, while its pavilion, the Petit Palais, still hosts free festival concerts. Every summer, the Montreux Jazz Festival’s stars still make it their base: in July 2025, Grace Jones posed on one of its balconies.

1965: “Lady L” at the Palace

Cinema too has its quarters at the Montreux Palace. In January 1965, Peter Ustinov shot scenes of “Lady L” there with Sophia Loren and David Niven, in the hotel’s lounges: “Quiet on set!”

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