Author: Maarten Koning

Ardez and Steinsberg Castle

The region has been a battlefield for centuries. The Counts of Tyrol, the (Austrian and Spanish) Habsburgs, local dynasties, the Bünder alliances and their (French) allies were the main protagonists until the last war, the Bündner Wirren (1618-1639).

The Lords of Frickingen of Überlingen am Bodensee built the Steinsberg castle in the eleventh century. The castle was destroyed in the Swabian War (der Schwabische Krieg) of 1499. Only the tower survived; it is the village’s hallmark today.

The village was destroyed by a fire in 1622 but rebuilt soon after. Most houses were built in the seventeenth century. Today, it is an open-air monument.

(Source and further information: www.ardez.ch)

Tarasp

Napoleon assigned Tarasp to the canton of Grisons in 1803 (Act of Mediation, Mediationsakte). The town had been an enclave of the Habsburgs for centuries. Tarasp is for this reason a Catholic community.

The mineral springs Luzius, Emerita, Bonifazius, and Carola generated the prosperity after 1860. Large spa hotels (Kurhaus Tarasp, Schweizerhof and Walhaus Hotel (burnt down in 1989) were built between 1875 and 1910.

The National Park, a hiking and skiing area, a golf resort and the Kunsthalle Nairs, a cultural centre, are new destinations in this monumental village.

(Source and further information: www.tarasp.ch).

 

 

Grand Riom Palace in Villa Carisch

Hotel Waldhaus in Sils (canton  Graubünden) was built in 1908. The guests appreciated the view of Lake Sils, the Maloja pass, the mountains, and the valley. Many famous guests, writers, movie stars, politicians, artists and aristocrats visited the hotel to see and to be seen. It was the time of the booming Spa, health industry, and winter and summer tourism.

Many Grand Hotels can still be admired, with the same function, abandoned or with other destinations. They have in common that they were built in small villages with a few hundred inhabitants.

The failures and never realised dreams are less known. The small village of Riom exhibits in Villa Carisch the dream of the Grand Riom Palace. The maquette shows the architecture of what could have been.

Charles Laurent Carisch (1882-1914), a grandson of Johannes Jacob Carisch (1820-1906), inherited from his father Charles Auguste Carisch (1851-1906) the fortune which Johannes had made as the owner of restaurants in Paris.

Scuol, Tarasp, St. Moritz, Sils and Davos were similar villages at the beginning of the tourism boom.  Charles Laurent had the vision, the architect and the money, but then came the First World War.

He died as a French soldier in 1914, and with him died the dream of the Grand Riom Palace in Riom.

(Further information: www.origen.ch).