The Belvedere Hotel in Switzerland ceased operations in 2016. The Belvedere Hotel itself was slowly decaying and had not been renovated for a long time, which led to its disrepair. Built in 1882, the Belvedere Hotel was once an iconic building in the Swiss Alps. Some claim that the route to the hotel is one of the scariest routes.
The Furka Pass is a paradise for road trip lovers in the Swiss High Alps. Today, tourists come here to take a look at the once-thriving hotel and head to the glacier where the ice grotto used to be. It was a 100-metre-long ice tunnel and chamber that could be visited when the road was open in the summer. The panoramic location of the Hotel Belvédère attracted a pampered clientele who sometimes stayed here for several weeks in the summer.
At the beginning of the 20th century, when the hotel industry was booming throughout Switzerland, Josef Seiler dared to build a new addition: a gabled roof with two additional floors, which gave the hotel its current appearance. The number of beds increased to 90 in 1907. In the 20th century, the number of visitors to the Rhône Glacier and the hotel steadily increased thanks to the opening of two new railway lines. However, the number of guests in the Alpine region has declined sharply since the 1960s.
Cars are becoming too powerful and fast, and what used to be a two- or three-day trip by rail is now reduced to a single day. In 1964, Furka Pass was the setting for a chase scene in the James Bond film Goldfinger. Sean Connery is said to have stayed at the hotel; according to rumours, he became a regular visitor in the years that followed.
Pope John XXIII was also one of the hotel’s famous regular guests.