Hotel Bellevue Palace

Bellevue Palace
Hotel Bellevue Palace
General information
Location	Bern
Coordinates	46°56′48″N 7°26′48″E / 46.9466°N 7.4466°E / 46.9466; 7.4466Coordinates: 46°56′48″N 7°26′48″E / 46.9466°N 7.4466°E / 46.9466; 7.4466
Opening	1865, rebuilt 1912 and reopened 27 November 1913
Owner	Swiss Confederation
Management	Victoria-Jungfrau Collection AG
Design and construction
Architect	Architekturbüro Lindt und Hofmann
Developer	Alphons and Philipp Osswald
Other information
Number of rooms	130
Website
www.bellevue-palace.ch

The Bellevue Palace is a five-star luxury hotel located in the Old City of Bern, Switzerland. Owned by the Swiss Confederation, it is the state's guesthouse for visiting heads of state and government, and is host to dozens of members of parliament during the weeks the assembly is in session.

The original Bellevue Palace was built by the financier Friedrich Osswald in 1865 immediately adjacent to the seat of the federal government, the Bundeshaus. His heirs had the hotel torn down and rebuilt it in 1910 in the neoclassicist style. The new Bellevue Palace was reopened in 1913 and General Ulrich Wille made it Switzerland's military headquarters during World War I. During World War II, the hotel remained open for business. It became a focal point of the warring powers' diplomatic and intelligence activities in Switzerland and its bar a haunt of OSS station chief Allen Dulles. One half of the restaurant came to be frequented by Allied guests and the other by patrons from Axis states.

After the war, the hotel's fortunes declined sharply. To prevent the state hotel from being acquired by foreign buyers, the Swiss National Bank acquired it in 1976, and in 1994 made a gift of it to the Confederation, which retains 99.7% of the hotel's shares. After it became apparent that the Bellevue Palace was in need of an overhaul, as it lacked amenities such as air conditioning, it was closed in 2002 for a one-year renovation that cost CHF 40 million and cut the number of rooms from 230 to 130. Following a spate of bad publicity over low staff wages, the Confederation turned over the management to a chain of Swiss luxury hotels in 2007.