Journal

Notes from
the valley

Races on the ice, a walnut tart that travelled across Europe, and why the sky here looks retouched. Written by the people who work in the house.

A stone-pine writing desk with a notebook, a trail map of the Engadin and a cup of tea

Spectators in fur hats watching horses race across the frozen lake

Winter · 6 min · February 2026

Racing on the ice: a weekend at White Turf

Every February since 1907, thoroughbreds gallop across the frozen lake. What to wear, where to stand, and why the skikjöring is the race to watch.

Read the story

Hands pressing the pastry lid onto a walnut tart

Table· 5 min

The walnut tart that left the valley

Engadiner Nusstorte was invented by bakers from this valley who emigrated across Europe. Our pastry chef shares the version she makes every morning.

Snow crystals glittering in the air over a snowy ridge under a deep blue sky

Valley· 4 min

What the champagne climate actually is

Dry air, high altitude and 322 days of sun: how a nineteenth-century hotelier’s bet turned a summer spa town into the place that invented winter tourism.

A long line of cross-country skiers crossing a frozen lake

Winter· 7 min

Forty-two kilometres across the frozen lakes

Fourteen thousand skiers, four lakes and one Sunday in March. Our reception manager has done the Engadin Skimarathon eleven times.

An old Engadin house with ornate grey sgraffito around its windows

Craft· 5 min

Reading the walls of Guarda

The patterns scratched into Engadin façades are not just decoration. A walk through the village that has the finest sgraffito in the valley.

A wooden jetty and a rowing boat on the calm lake on a summer morning

Summer· 6 min

The other season

In July the lake is blue, the larches are green and the Maloja wind fills the kites on Silvaplana every afternoon at one. A week of summer, day by day.