Hotel Arbez

The Hotel Arbez, also called the Hotel Arbez Franco-Suisse, is a hotel that straddles the international border between France and Switzerland in the tiny village of La Cure, which is itself divided by the boundary. Built by a private landowner and businessman specially to take advantage of an impending border adjustment between the two countries, the structure was originally used as a grocery store (its Swiss portion) and a pub (the French half). Today, the entire building houses a hotel, whose dining room, kitchen and several rooms are bisected by the boundary.

The unique situation of the Hotel Arbez grew out of a dispute between France and Switzerland over possession of the Vallee des Dappes, just south and west of the tiny town of La Cure. Though the valley had little value as a territorial possession, it provided an accessible military route between France and Savoy. Annexed by Napoleonic France in 1802, it was returned to Switzerland by the Congress of Vienna, though the French continued to call for its retrocession. After several attempts to acquire the area were firmly rebuffed by the Swiss, France decided in 1862 to offer a nearby section of its own territory, comparable in size, in exchange. The Swiss agreed, and a treaty was accordingly signed in Bern by which slightly less than three square miles changed hands. While La Cure had previously been located entirely inside France, the new boundary was slated to cut the village—including some residences and a pub—in half. The treaty stipulated that any already-existing structure bisected by the border was to be left undisturbed, and this gave one local businessman an idea.

At the time of the signing of the treaty in December 1862, the land currently occupied by the Hotel Arbez was owned by a French citizen named Ponthus. Taking advantage of the provision about leaving undisturbed previously-existing buildings bisected by the new boundary, coupled with the delay in ratification by the Swiss Parliament, he hurriedly erected a three-story structure in a location that would straddle the border, with approximately one-third in what would become Swiss territory, and the remaining two-thirds in France. Hoping to take advantage of the new cross-border traffic, he opened a grocery store in the Swiss portion of the building and a bar in the French section. By 1921 Ponthus' heirs had fallen on hard times, and the building was sold to Jules-Jean Arbeze, who remodeled it and reopened it as a hotel.

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