The Caux Palace
Nestled above the city of Montreux and overlooking Lake Geneva, the Caux Palace offers an inspiring and extraordinary setting for taking the time to have some perspective, retreat from the bustling routine and find a space that allows space for creative sharing and exchanging.
The Palace was built by Ami Chessex and architect Eugëne Jost. It was one of the most advanced, luxurious and biggest hotels ever built in Switzerland. Celebrities such as Sacha Guitry, Paul Morand, Romain Rolland, Edgar Wallace, Prince Ibn Saud, Rudyard Kipling, John D. Rockefeller, the Maharajah of Baroda, and members of renowned households such as Kellogg and Gillette, visited and stayed here.
The Caux Palace houses The Swiss Hotel Management School, one of the premier institutions in Switzerland for Hospitality and Business Education. Students not only study but also live in Caux Palace. This enables them to actually experience luxury and not just study them in books.
The Legendary Cesar Ritz
Famously known as “King of Hoteliers, and Hotelier to Kings” César Ritz was a Swiss hotelier and founder of several hotels, most famously the Hôtel Ritz in Paris and the Ritz and Carlton Hotels in London now called the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Caesar Ritz knew in which ambiance a guest feels comfortable. He grasped the essence of the hotel business: It is always the hospitality which defines the wellbeing of the guest.
His relentless focus on guest and customer experience within his teams was made clear in the famous phrase: “The customer is never wrong”.
It’s not just the memory of a hotel genius, but also his visions and ideas which are still important in the catering and hotel business today. At César Ritz Colleges, our programmes give students the best of both worlds: a ‘Ritz-inspired’ Swiss hospitality education in campuses drenched in history and tradition combined with an American / British approach to business management and entrepreneurship.
Monumental Le Bellevue Restaurant
Housed in a beautiful Belle-Epoque building above Lake Geneva, The Le Bellevue Restaurant has 16/20 GaultMillau points and offers gourmet pleasures. The building also hosts our partner school Glion Institute of Higher Education and Bellevue is its training restaurant.
The Chef and kitchen staff are all big names in the world of the culinary arts, much to the delight of the guests and our students, who get hands-on training here. Chef Dominique Toulousy had 2 Michelin stars for his restaurant in Toulouse, before he took over as Chef of another training restaurant, the renowned Hotel School of Lausanne. Reza Nahaboo, Switzerland’s best sommelier in 2016, selects and serves the wines.
The Legendary Chef Anton Mosimann
Anton Mosimann OBE, DL is a Swiss chef and restaurateur who was Maitre Chef des Cuisines at the Dorchester Hotel at the age of 28 years. He served there for thirteen years, during his tenure its restaurant achieved a rating of two stars in the Michelin Guide which was the first hotel restaurant outside France to do so.
Mosimann is credited with the creation of ‘Cuisine Naturelle’. The focus is concentrated more on the flavour of the individual ingredients and an enormous emphasis is put on the presentation of the dishes.” His book, Cuisine Naturelle, was published in 1985.
Our partner college Culinary Arts Academy houses THE MOSIMANN COLLECTION: A CULINARY HERITAGE. Students draw inspiration from this one of a kind Rare Experience that includes works of art from Anton Mosimann’s private collection, gastronomy books dating back to the 15th Century and a fascinating collection of photographs and menus, capturing key moments in history. His many awards and honours (including the Order of the British Empire)