Caux Palace Hotel
| Caux Palace Hotel | |
|---|---|
 |
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| General information | |
| Architectural style | eclectic |
| Town or city | Caux, Vaud |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Completed | 7 July 1902 |
| Client | Ami Chessex |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Eugène Jost |
The Caux-Palace Hotel is a former palace hotel located in Caux, above Montreux in the Vaud canton, in Switzerland. Built on the Caux Mount by the Swiss architect Eugène Jost, it was inaugurated on 7 July 1902. The building rests on a 400-meter long terrace and is decorated with an abundance of towers and turrets with coloured tiles, which make it a remarkable feature of the Montreux landscape, visible from the whole Montreux Riviera region. It soon became an international venue first in the early 20th century as a luxury hotel, then from 1946 on as an international conference centre dedicated to the rebuilding of Europe under the leadership of the Swiss Initiatives of Change team. It is now also the seat of the Swiss Hotel Management School (SHMS) which uses the premises during the school semesters while Initiatives of Change keeps organising summer conferences there each year. The Caux-Palace Hotel is listed as a cultural property of national significance in Switzerland.
Until 1875, the area around Caux was only sparsely populated. The "Caux mountains" had always been used as a pasture for local farmers while the road to the Jaman pass was the shortest route towards the Sarine and Simmental valleys. In 1875 taking into account the rapid development of tourism on the lakeside where the first hotels had opened in 1837 in Montreux and in 1841 in Territet, Emile Monnier decided to transform his chalet on the Caux Mountain into an inn with a view to welcome the ramblers who started to explore the mountainside. This development had first affected the village of Glion, halfway between Montreux and Caux: a road to Glion was opened in 1850 and a cable-car service was opened between Territet and Glion in 1883. About at the same time local entrepreneurs became aware of the potential of Caux, almost 1000 meters above Glion. Philippe Faucherre, born in 1844 and his wife Louise Vauthier, both from hotel management background, were among them. In 1890 Faucherre bought a stone career in the area and built the Caux Grand Hotel in 3 years, all the needed material being brought to the construction site by mules for lack of other means of transportation! The railway from Glion to Caux and to the Rochers-de-Naye summit was built at the same time and inaugurated in 1892 after only 15 months of works, a technical tour-de-force realized under the famous railway engineer Laubi. The extension of this railway between Montreux and Glion would wait 27 more years! The road to Caux was also opened at the same time by public works contractor Pierre Botelli. The immediate success of Grand Hotel which attracted many notorious people to Caux led other entrepreneurs to conceive the Caux Palace Hotel.
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