Art Deco Hotel Montana

Class: First

Style: Art deco

Rooms: 62

The Art Deco Hotel Montana is precisely what it claims to be; though the building, high on a hillside overlooking the lake and town of Lucerne, actually predates the movement by a decade or so, it’s an Art Deco hotel, through and through.

A private cable car ferries guests up from the lakeside to the hotel, and from there the facade cuts quite a silhouette, a grand and elegant canary-and-blue structure topped with the ‘MONTANA’ sign and the square Swiss flag. Inside, though, the hotel looks even sharper, its newly renovated spaces bearing the sheen of newness and the crisp lines of the Art Deco design. Parquet floors and bold geometric prints are the rule, the corridors lined in thick stripes and densely patterned carpets.

Rooms are light and airy, a substantial improvement from the sort of French antique look of a few years ago, and the bathrooms are delightfully modern, with freestanding tubs and modern fixtures. Junior suites, especially, are a Deco throwback, with multicolored wood flooring and more historic checkered and tiled bathrooms.

Most rooms have small balconies overlooking the city or the lake, ringed with perennially snow-capped mountains. The hotel restaurant is designed after the style of a Greek temple, with plaster reliefs depicting various mythological figures. The Louis Bar plays host to live jazz bands, in true Swiss style, and meeting and function spaces are available as well—but for anything else (fitness center, recreation) it’s back down the cable car to the town. No matter, as this charming town is half the attraction.