From guesthouse to clinic to villa: 150 years of this villa

Villa Beaulieu has stood on the same spot above Lake St. Moritz since 1868, and in that time it has been four different houses: a guesthouse, a private villa, the clinic of the valley for more than eighty years, and since 2026 a villa for guests again. Those layers are still visible in the building. If you know where to look, you find them on every floor.

1868: Pension Joos

It begins as Pension Joos, in the middle of St. Moritz. The villa receives travellers crossing the Engadin and is run in its early years as a modest bed and breakfast.

St. Moritz is stirring at the time. Tourism is only beginning to discover the valley, and houses like this one are the first addresses for guests, long before the great hotel palaces are built.

1926: Gaudenz von Planta gives the villa its name

In 1926 Gaudenz von Planta buys the villa. A writer and poet, a member of the Graubünden von Planta family, he renames it Villa Beaulieu, French for the beautiful place.

The name is no exaggeration. The villa looks out over Lake St. Moritz to the surrounding peaks, and that outlook has shaped its character ever since. The earliest known photograph of the villa dates from this period.

1941 to 2023: Klinik Gut

In 1941 the longest chapter begins. The villa becomes home to Klinik Gut, the well-known alpine clinic of the Engadin, and stays that way for more than eighty years.

Generations of St. Moritz locals were born here, treated here, waited here for news. For the valley this villa was not one address among many but the clinic. The name Gut still carries weight in the Engadin today.

We invented nothing in this villa. We uncovered what was already here and decided what was allowed to stay.

— Nicca Schneider, Interior & History

2023 to 2025: the quiet years

After the clinic moved out, the villa stood empty. For two years nothing happened, and that is precisely what saved it. Nothing was gutted, nothing hastily modernised.

When we began in 2025 we found a villa that had kept its substance. Stone pine on ceilings and walls, old doors, fittings nobody had replaced.

What remains of the clinic

The conversion was less a rebuild than a selection. What was good stayed.

• Stone pine on ceilings and walls, especially on the top floor. You can still smell it.
• La Contessa, once the living room of Grandmother Gut, today a corner room of 21 to 24 square metres with arguably the finest view in the villa.
• Doors as furniture. In Il Conte a carved door serves as the headboard, in La Stalla a historic barn door.
• The layout. Where consulting rooms were, rooms are now. The walls stayed where they stood.
• The names. Each of the thirteen rooms and suites carries its own name instead of a number.

Since 2026: a villa for guests again

In December 2025 the revival begins quietly, with the soft opening of Le Bar. Since 2026 the whole villa has been open: eight rooms, five suites, a bar that stays open late, a sun terrace above the lake, and a programme shaped by the valley.

Where the consulting rooms once were, guests now sit together over a glass in the evening. The Ballroom seats up to 70 for concerts, talks and dinners. This is not a newly built hotel but a villa with memory, still in use.

Why this matters for your stay

Houses with history cannot be reproduced. They have crooked walls, rooms of differing sizes, and corners no architect would have drawn that way.

If you like that, you are in the right place. The full timeline with images is under the story, the villa itself under the villa. How St. Moritz grew up around this building is documented by Engadin St. Moritz.

If you would like to know more about a particular room, write to us. Almost every room has a story that is not on the website.