Mandarin Oriental Savoy Zurich (former Savoy Baur en Ville)

Zurich can take great pride in having had such a farsighted entrepreneur, who managed to leave the world two of its most famous hotels. His name was Johannes Baur. Born in Austria in 1795, he opend his first hotel in 1838 at the age of 43. It is today the Mandarin Oriental Savoy Zurich, Zurich's oldest grand hotel. When it opened on December 24, 1838, it marked a milestone in the history of the hotel industry. His second hotel is the Baur au Lac, which we also feature as a Select Member of famoushotels.org

In 1837, Johannes Baur (pic) had bought the building, which had previously served as a rectory. It was situated next to the city's most important new post station.

The room and accommodation situation in Zurich at the time is best described by Murray's first guidebook of Switzerland (1837):
ZURICH-Inns: Schwert (Epée)-overlooking the Limmat, close to the broad wooden bridge which serves as a market-place;-expensive, and neither very good nor clean.
Beds, 3 fr.; dinner, table d'hote, 3 fr.- in private, & fr.; tea and breakfast, 2 fr.-Raabe (Corbeau);-Storch (Cycogne). (Table d'hote, with wine, 2 fr. 8 sous; bed, 2 fr.; breakfast, 1 fr. 4 sous.
The inns at Zurich are notoriously dirty, high priced and ill attended: they have hitherto enjoyed a monopoly, and there has been no inducement to improve. But at this time (1837) two large new inns are building--one near the outlet of the Limmat from the lake, on the rt. bank of the river; the other near the new post-office.

The one near the post office – that was Baur's first hotel! Together with his wife Anna Knechtli, Baur converted the house into a hotel until 1838 according to the plans of the architect Daniel Pfister. On 24 December 1838, 43-years old Johannes Baur opened the Baur en Ville, a huge guesthouse in the heart of the Swiss city of Zurich — the "first actual hotel" of the city. At that time, it comprised 140 beds and stables for 36-40 horses. Various techical features were "firsts" in the industry, such as speaking tubes and an orangerie-roofgarden, beating the dusty streets of the still developing city.

The HOTEL BAUR  boasted “one dining room, two parlours for dinner and déjeuner â part as well as manger à la carte, 10 more rooms, 140 beds, stables for 36-40 horses and a barn down by the river, fitting 50 more horses.”

By 1844, Baur opened his second enterprise, the Baur au Lac (Baur at the Lake), which to this day, is still among Zurich's leading hotels. The original Baur in the city later adoped the second name "Savoy" and was for a long time called SAVOY BAUR EN VILLE. In 2023, it came under the wings of the Mandarin Oriental Group and is now called Savoy Mandarin Oriental Zurich.

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