Bizarre But True! This hotel comes equipped with its own observatory and lets you sleep two miles above sea level. The 3100 Kulmhotel Gornergrat sits at exactly 3,100 metres in the Swiss Alps, making it the highest hotel in the Alps. The air is thinner up here and your body knows it the moment you step off the cogwheel train…
That train is your only way up. No road exists. The hotel can’t be reached by car because Zermatt banned them entirely and even if they hadn’t, no one built a road to this specific patch of mountain.
The construction crews spent ten years hauling materials up this peak using Victorian-era technology. They finished in 1907.
Scientists Converted Your Hotel Room Into A Telescope
In the late 1960s, astronomers installed two observatories in the hotel’s towers and from 1967 to 2010, researchers studied the cosmos from domes attached to guest accommodation.
You’re not just staying in a hotel that happens to have nice views. You’re staying in a functioning research facility… that rents rooms. The University of Milan even put Europe’s largest infrared telescope here – 1.5 metres in diameter, housed in the north tower!
With minimal light pollution, dry air and altitude that cuts through atmospheric interference the conditions let you see the Milky Way with your naked eye. Planets appear without equipment and the cosmos unfolds for guests.
Twenty-Nine Mountains Over 4,000 Metres
Stand at the hotel and count them. The Matterhorn dominates the view, but twenty-eight other peaks break the 4,000-metre threshold from this single vantage point.
The cogwheel railway that brought you here was the world’s first fully electrified cog system. Operational since 1898, it climbs 1,484 metres in 33 minutes. (That’s nearly five Empire State Buildings, vertically!)
What You Actually Get Up Here
Not content with luxury accommodation and it’s own telescope, the hotel also claims Europe’s highest shopping mall too..!
Visitors describe it as “a few shops” rather than an actual mall, but it’s Europe’s most elevated retail space, even if the scale doesn’t match the title.
What’s Stopping You…?
The hotel operates a restaurant serving Swiss cuisine whilst you stare at the Matterhorn through floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a sun terrace where the altitude makes the UV brutal but the views justify the sunburn risk.
Guided telescope sessions run in the evenings where actual astronomers walk you through what you’re seeing. Hiking trails branch out from the hotel entrance, including routes to the Monte Rosa massif. The cogwheel railway runs multiple times daily, so you’re not trapped despite the isolation.
Rooms range from standard doubles to suites…
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PRICE : ★★★★☆
WOW FACTOR : ★★★☆☆
BIZARRENESS : ★★★☆☆
