St. Moritz

Cold here is dry, and that one fact explains the resort. The Engadin sits high and open, a long valley strung with lakes and turned to the sun, and its winters are bright and hard rather than damp and grey. That climate is what a summer spa town used to talk itself into a winter season, and the season never ended. Everything the place is now — the grand hotels, the ice on the lake, the habit of dressing for dinner — grew out of an argument about weather.

A valley, not a village

St. Moritz reads as one name and behaves as two. The Dorf sits on the terrace above the lake, compact and steep, and holds the shops and most of the grand hotels. The Bad lies below it by the water, where the mineral springs that started the whole business still are. Between them is a walk you would not attempt with luggage.

Beyond the town the valley keeps going, southwest past a chain of lakes and northeast toward the glacier. The villages strung along it sit on the same mountains and the same lift network at a noticeably different price, which is the single most useful piece of information anyone planning a trip here can have. How you reach them differs: Celerina, Samedan and Pontresina are on the regional railway, while the lakeside villages to the southwest — Silvaplana, Sils and the rest — are served by the valley buses instead.

The winter

December through March is the season the resort is built for, and each month behaves differently. Early winter is dark and quiet with the snow still arriving. Midwinter brings the events the frozen lake is famous for, when the ice is thick enough to carry horse racing and a polo tournament on a surface that is a lake again by May. Late winter is the pick for most people: long days, high sun, reliable snow up top, and a valley floor that has begun to thaw while the mountains have not.

Summer is a different holiday entirely, and a good one — walking, the lakes, an almost empty valley — but it is not what this place is known for or priced for.

Is it expensive?

Yes, and there is no use pretending otherwise. This is Switzerland at the top of its own market, and the costs stack: the room, the lift pass, the mountain restaurants, the transfer, and the quiet expectation in parts of the town that you will change before dinner.

What is negotiable is where you sleep and where you eat. A bed in one of the valley villages puts you on the same slopes and the same railway for markedly less; eating on the mountain at midday costs more than eating in the village at night; and a half-board arrangement, unfashionable as it sounds, remains the most effective single lever on the total. Availability at the peak weeks and around the lake events tightens a long way in advance, so comparing current stay and experience options across your dates is worth doing early rather than hopefully.

What is worth paying for

Height, and the railway. The funicular and cable cars that climb out of the valley deliver a view along the lakes that no road gives you, and they run for walkers as readily as for skiers. The line that crosses the passes from here is a piece of engineering worth riding for its own sake, in either direction, in any season — slow, deliberate, and built through terrain that had no business carrying a railway.

After that, the ice. Walking out onto a frozen lake with a town on its shore is an experience the rest of the Alps mostly cannot offer, and it costs nothing at all.

Where to stay

The Aspirational Luxury Pick

A grand hotel in the Dorf with the lake below the windows, a spa, and the kind of dining room that still has a dress code. This is the thing St. Moritz invented and it is priced as such. Right for travellers who want the town's own tradition rather than a modern chalet, and who will use the hotel as much as the mountain.

The Mid-Tier Value Premium Selection

A well-run hotel in Celerina, Pontresina or another of the valley villages, with a garden or a terrace and a short ride to the lifts. You give up the address and the lake view and keep the mountains, the trains and a considerably calmer evening. Most people should start here.

The Smart Entry-Level Option

An apartment or family-run hotel further down the valley, with the regional railway at the end of the street. Space improves, rates ease sharply, and the commute up to the slopes is a scenic train ride rather than a chore.

The valley at a glance