At Hotel Arbez You Can Sleep In Two Countries At Once

At Hotel Arbez you can live the experience of being in both France and Switzerland at once.

Hotel Arbez is a small in at La Cure, a border village with parts in Switzerland and parts in France. La Cure was originally completely in France, until 1862. When Switzerland took back Vallee des Dappes,which was annexed by Napoleonic France, France wanted it back. In exchange for a part of the valley, France offered a sizable nearby land, and La Cure became divided between the two countries.

Looking to profit from the agreement, a French man named Ponthus decided to build a grocery store/pub just before the ratification of the agreement. Hoping to make it a hallmark for border trading, Ponthus hurried to erect a three-storey structure right on the borders.

In 1921 the property was sold to Jules-Jean Arbeze, who turned it into a hotel with under his name.

Today, the Franco-Swiss border passes through the kitchen, dining room, hallway and several rooms of the Hotel Arbez:

Today, the dining room, staircase and several rooms are divided by the boundary. The bed in the honeymoon suite lies half in france and half in Switzerland, that makes you literally sleeping in two countries at once.

When France was invaded by Nazi Germany during World War II, the hotel became a popular hideout to refugees and the French Resistance. Because the hotel’s only staircase starts in France but ends in Switzerland, the German forces could not go up the stairs, or they would be violating Switzerland’s neutrality.

Hotel Arbez was also chosen for the negotiations between France and Algeria in 1962. The Évian Accords resulted in Algerian independence from French colonialism.