Hotel des Trois Couronnes, Vevey

The well-established hotel owner Gabriel Monnet inaugurated the hotel on May 3, 1842. The architect was P. Franel. Monnet used to have an inn on the Rue du Simplon in the heart of town and simply transferred the inn's name to his new hotel, now on the water's edge. Building waterfront hotels to substitute for hotels in the city's heart was all the rage during this period: several hotels in Geneva had done it (for instance, the Couronne in 1836 and the Ecu de Geneve in 1841), as well as in Luzern (the Schwanen in 1835).

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When the Hotel des Trois Couronnes in Vevey was built, there were few hotels on the shores of Lake Geneva that could measure up to it as far as size and interiors were concerned. At best, the Hotel des Bergues in Geneva, inaugurated in 1834, or the Hotel Byron in Villeneuve near Castle Chillon, opened in 1841 were comparable to this new hotel. In October 1859 Tsar Nicholas I took all 60 rooms on all four floors for himself and his entourage and spent the winter at Vevey. The climate at the lake was certainly much milder than in St. Petersburg. And it was safer, too. In 1863 the town council of Vevey decided to build a quay along the waterfront which caused the hotel to lose its direct access to the lake. Around 1890, the hotel underwent a radical change: in the briefest of time, it was changed from a neo-classical building to a neo-baroque triple-wing structure grouped around a northern courtyard.
Henry James, who was born in New York but spent his childhood in Europe with his parents, was very fond of travelling, going to France, Italy, wherever his whim took him. It was during a visit to Vevey that he became seduced by the ambiance of the Hotel des Trois Couronnes, where he stayed and wrote his novel “Daisy Miller”, published in 1878. James describes the streets and houses of Vevey, and above all, the Hotel and its clientèle. When one steps through the hotel's doors one feels set back in time. The historic rooms are carefully kept in character with the hotel and they revive the spirit of the "grande epoque" of the Swiss hotel industry. Current management has been careful not to infringe on the hotel's lengthy history in any changes that modern-day convenience may require.

Henry James

Daisy Miller Part I At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels, for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake--a lake that it behooves every tourist to visit. The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of establishments of this order, of every category, from the "grand hotel" of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the little Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteristics of an American watering place. There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting hither and thither of "stylish" young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces, a rattle of dance music in the morning hours, a sound of high-pitched voices at all times. You receive an impression of these things at the excellent inn of the "Trois Couronnes" and are transported in fancy to the Ocean House or to Congress Hall. But at the "Trois Couronnes," it must be added, there are other features that are much at variance with these suggestions: neat German waiters, who look like secretaries of legation; Russian princesses sitting in the garden; little Polish boys walking about held by the hand, with their governors; a view of the sunny crest of the Dent du Midi and the picturesque towers of the Castle of Chillon. I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the "Trois Couronnes," looking about him, rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned. It was a beautiful summer morning, and in whatever fashion the young American looked at things, they must have seemed to him charming. He had come from Geneva the day before by the little steamer, to see his aunt, who was staying at the hotel--Geneva having been for a long time his place of residence. But his aunt had a headache-- his aunt had almost always a headache--and now ... //online-literature.com/henry_james/1100/