Baur au Lac

The Hotel

Baur au Lac was founded in 1844 by Johannes Baur, an Alsatian-born hotelier who had previously operated the Baur en Ville on Paradeplatz (still extant as the Hotel Savoy Baur en Ville). The new property was built on a piece of land at the head of Lake Zurich (Talstrasse) that the city was reclaiming from the lake at the time. Since 1844 the hotel has been in continuous family ownership: Baur was succeeded by his son-in-law Theodor Kracht, and the Kracht family has run the property uninterrupted for six generations — the only Swiss grand hotel still held by its founding family. The current managing partners are Andrea and Pia Kracht. The hotel was rebuilt in 1953 (after the original timber structure was lost to fire), refurbished in stages through the 2000s, and most recently completed a comprehensive five-year renovation programme in 2023.

The 115 rooms (including 39 suites) are arranged across the main building's seven floors, with the better categories on the upper floors looking south across the private park to Lake Zurich and west to the Alps on clear days. Standard Single and Double Rooms run smaller than the contemporary five-star average (around 25–35 square metres) but the historic building, the lake views, and the private park are the substitute. Junior Suites and Deluxe Suites are larger; the named suites (the Royal, the Pavillon, the Lake View, the Park View) are the headline units — the Royal Suite occupies the top-floor corner with a private terrace overlooking the park and the lake. The hotel's 2023 renovation replaced every soft furnishing, brought every bathroom to a contemporary standard, and added refined climate control while preserving the historic envelope intact — the most considered grand-hotel update in Switzerland this decade.

The Pavillon — the hotel's flagship restaurant — has held one Michelin star continuously since 1968, the longest single-property Michelin run in Zurich. Chef Laurent Eperon runs a French-Swiss menu in the round, glass-walled garden pavilion that gives the restaurant its name. Baur's Brasserie & Bar is the all-day venue (the bar is the city's most consistently busy banking-finance evening room — the Lobby Bar tradition that the Baur au Lac essentially invented). Le Hall is the afternoon-tea venue under the original 1953 chandelier; the Marble Hall is the historic ballroom for events. The wine cellar — the Baur au Lac Wein collection — operates as a separate, independently respected fine-wine merchant and the hotel's own cellar holds an estimated 30,000+ bottles.

Service is the property's central proposition and the line that defines its position. The staff-to-room ratio is reportedly the highest of any Swiss hotel; the concierge desk has a depth of relationships across Swiss banking, the Federal Council, and the Zurich cultural establishment that no contemporary competitor can match. The position is the second proposition: the private park (the only fully enclosed Bahnhofstrasse-corridor green space at any Zurich hotel), the head-of-the-lake address opposite Bürkliplatz, the three-minute walk to UBS, Credit Suisse (now part of UBS), Paradeplatz, and the Lindenhof. By any honest measure, Baur au Lac is the best hotel in Switzerland and one of the strongest grand-hotel propositions anywhere in continental Europe.

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