Hotel Les Trois Rois

Hotel Les Trois Rois Hotel drei Könige/Hotel of the Three Kings
Hotel Les Trois Rois (2012)
General information
Location	Flims, Graubünden, Switzerland
Coordinates	47°33′37.6″N 7°35′15.6″E
Opening	1681 (with present name)
Owner	Thomas Straumann
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Amadeus Merian (1844 rebuild) Christian Lang (2006 renovations)
Website
Official site

The Hotel Les Trois Rois in Basel, till 1986 usually identified by its German language name as the Hotel drei Könige is sometimes cited as one of Switzerland's oldest hotels. It is located on the left bank of the river, a few paces downstream of the city's first bridge across the Rhine.

History

Before the railways were built, the River Rhine was the most important trade artery in western Europe, and Basel was the principal terminal point at its southern end. Beside the transshipment jetties where merchandise was off-loaded from the boats on the north/east bank of the river there was already a guest house, identified as [the] "domus zem blumen in vico crucis" "(House of Flowers at the cross street)" in 1255, which was probably a decade or so after the ferry crossings of the river were complemented at this point by a road bridge. However, the guest house and adjacent buildings had to be demolished after the 1356 earthquake.

The first surviving record of a hotel on this site with its modern name dates from 1681, where the "Drei Könige" Inn was identified as a place where itinerant merchants would stay. The name "Drei Könige" means "Three kings" and is a popular name for city hotels in Switzerland and Southern Germany. It is thought to be a reference to the Magi (popularly "Three Kings") who visited Jesus shortly after His birth: the Magi, like the merchants who stayed overnight in medieval hotels, were notable for the precious merchandise that they brought with them.

In 1841/42 the entire site was acquired by Johann Jakob Senn, hitherto a successful master taylor who foresaw possibilities for a massive expansion in leisure travel that would follow from the revolutions in transportation brought about by river steamer and the coming of the railways. He tore down the hotel and had it rebuilt in a much more luxurious style, employing the fashionable Basel architect de to design what would later be seen as an early example of Belle Époque architecture. The rebuilt hotel reopened on 16 February 1844. From now on it would present itself as a "Grand Hotel", with a guest list that included many leading figures from the worlds of politics and the arts.

In 1915 the southern block of the hotel building was sold to the Basler Kantonalbank and converted appropriately. 23 years later, in 1938, the bankers moved out and this building became the City Tourist Information Office. The first change in ownership of the twenty-first century came in 2004 when the hotel, together with the block that had been separated off and sold to the bank in 1915, was acquired by an entrepreneur and dental implants magnate called Thomas Straumann. The hotel was closed down for two years while it was comprehensively rebuilt, incorporating the southern block and with a view to recapturing as far as possible the reality of the 1844 original, but only insofar as this was possible without abandoning the more modern luxury features considered appropriate for the twenty-first century. The hotel reopened on 20 March 2006. In 2012 Straumann announced that he was looking for a buyer for the hotel. Disappointingly, however a suitable buyer had still not been found two years later, and in December 2014 it was announced that the hotel was no longer for sale.

Celebrities

Political leaders who have stayed at the hotel include Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and the Dalai Lama. Heads of state claimed as guests include King Farouk of Egypt and Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. A military leader who stayed in the hotel in 1798 who might appear in either of those categories was Napoleon Bonaparte. A more recent guest was Britain's General Montgomery. Guests from the worlds of the arts and literature have included Voltaire, Jean-Paul Sartre, Charles Dickens, Herbert von Karajan, Duke Ellington and Marc Chagall.

The distinguished composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was woken up by police at six in the morning in his room at the Hotel Les Trois Rois late in 2001: the officers confiscated his passport and disappeared. Some years earlier, in 1967, Boulez had given an interview to Der Spiegel in which he had given his opinion that "the opera houses should be blown up". The observation had resurfaced in the media during the 1990s, and the laws enforcement officials had apparently picked up on it during a routine check of hotel guest registrations. On this occasion, however, they decided not to pursue that matter and the passport was returned after a few days.