In Switzerland you can stay in a Bauhaus Hotel built on an energy field

On the hills overlooking Ascona, with views of Lake Maggiore and strategically hidden among woods and olive groves, stands a hotel that quietly made history in the twentieth century. Designed in the Bauhaus style, commissioned by Baron Eduard von der Heydt and built by architect Emil Fahrenkamp, the Monte Verità hotel tells the story of a century—its utopias, its escapes, and its wars. But why is there a Bauhaus hotel in Ticino? To understand, we need to go back to the early nineteenth century and explain how a hill above Ascona—the quintessential Swiss postcard town—transformed into the twentieth century’s first utopia: Monte Verità.

They called themselves “reformists” and, at the turn of the century, fled the industrial cities of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria to live in the woods, building schools, sanatoriums, and naturist colonies. The Lebensreform movement, meaning “Life Reform,” included intellectuals, artists, activists, political refugees, and even aristocrats, alarmed by pollution, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the bourgeoisie, who at the end of the 19th century sought to “return to nature.”

Among them was Henri Oedenkoven, an industrialist from Antwerp, who in 1900, together with his partner Ida Hofmann—a piano teacher and pioneering feminist—founded the first sanatorium on Monte Verità. It was based on principles of anti-industrialization, vegetarianism, matriarchy, and theosophy. This international commune was a refuge built on naturist and nudist principles. For many, it represented Europe’s first “hippie” experiment: living off the land in small huts, practicing dance, heliotherapy, and other activities designed to restore body and mind. Over time, with multiple ownership changes, Monte Verità hosted figures such as Richard Wagner, Otto Braun, Otto Gross, Isadora Duncan, Arthur Segal, Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, and many other artists, anarchists, and theosophists. Yet it also transformed, from a refuge from civilization to a tourist destination for industrialists and entrepreneurs. The esotericism surrounding the hill, however, never faded: numerous studies place Ascona at the center of gravitational fields, energy points, and initiation paths—names that continue to attract visitors to these hills.

Accompanying all of this is, naturally, the architecture: from a barren terrain, Monte Verità became populated over just a century with villas, huts, restaurants, theaters, gyms, swimming pools, and patios, commissioned by nobles from around the world with few economic limits and abundant creativity.

“Anatta” means “not self” or “away from the self” and refers to the dissolution of the ego—a Buddhist concept that arrived in the West through the interest of certain writers in Eastern religions, among them Hermann Hesse, who was also a guest at Monte Verità. “Anatta” was also the name given by the settlers to the first structure ever built on Monte Verità: a typical air-light hut made of wood, with windows on all sides.

These huts housed the life of the commune, which, according to the founders Hofmann and Oedenkoven, was meant to be spartan and far from bourgeois comforts—art, books, and musical instruments were limited. In total, there were twelve air-light huts, all handmade by the settlers. Among them was the “House of the Russians,” which in 1905 hosted students exiled from the Russian Revolution, reportedly including Vladimir Lenin. Outside the residences, the sanatorium extended through the park with bath tanks, outdoor showers, and exercise equipment scattered among the trees. Guests could train, rest, and take the air-light baths—activities that made the colony famous. Within a strictly fenced and gender-segregated plot of land, guests, freed from clothing, followed precise instructions for sunbathing, lying nude on wooden loungers for a maximum of twenty minutes.

Eduard von der Heydt, baron, banker to former Emperor Wilhelm II, and art collector, purchased the sanatorium from its founders in the 1920s for a modest sum. Between 1927 and 1929, he commissioned the Bauhaus hotel, inaugurating a decidedly more “society” phase for Monte Verità. Designed to host aristocratic friends and prominent personalities, the hotel translated the principles of modern architecture—functionality, formal rigor, large openings toward the landscape—into a hospitality machine immersed in greenery. The rooms are filled with African, Indian, and Chinese art collections, Swiss carnival masks, and other objects that the baron and his guests collected during travels around the world. The building also houses a restaurant and features a secret tunnel connecting it directly to the baron’s private quarters. The original project was by Emil Fahrenkamp, a German architect known for modernist and residential buildings, while Swiss architect Oswald Roelly oversaw construction. Attracted by the new building, Bauhaus artists visited Ascona: Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Bauhaus-Schawinsky, and Oskar Schlemmer were among those who stayed in the hotel.

Villa Semiramis, another hotel on Monte Verità, commissioned by collector and patron Maria Adler, presents a different case. An Art Nouveau building designed by a Turin-based architect in the early twentieth century, it was built on land granted by the baron to the Adler family. The original design included six floors with two “watchtowers,” intended to allow all guests to see the “sunbathing” of the Monte Verità nudists in the outdoor gyms. The construction on Monte Verità culminated in the 1950s, when, after the “Peace of Ascona” between Germany and the Allies, Ascona became a luxury tourist destination for mass tourism. As commune members withdrew to the valleys to live hermit-like lives, Monte Verità’s hotels attracted tourists, and the air-light huts were modernized. Among the post-war visitors was Harald Szeemann.

In the late 1970s, Harald Szeemann—a renowned Swiss curator known for revolutionizing exhibitions with projects like "Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form" (1969) and documenta 5 (1972)—visited Monte Verità and was deeply impressed. This encounter inspired a connection that revitalized the hill and materialized in the traveling exhibition "The Breasts of Truth," initially displayed in five locations in Ascona and later in Zurich, Vienna, and Munich.

The exhibition functioned as a true cabinet of curiosities, collecting stories, anecdotes, photographs, objects, and testimonies spanning more than a century of the sanatorium’s life—from the first reformists to the artistic and social events that animated Monte Verità. For the first time, it also recorded memories of Ascona’s inhabitants—poor farmers who, in the early twentieth century, had seen strangers arrive from the woods without ever interacting with them. This major exhibition, perhaps the only one able to capture the madness and atmosphere of those years, is now viewable at Casa Anatta, along with period photographs, works, and original memorabilia from the utopian communities and their early illustrious guests.

Today, Monte Verità offers a hybrid experience of hospitality, nature, history, and memory. After Baron Eduard von der Heydt’s death in 1964, the complex came under the Canton of Ticino’s care, and in 1989, the Monte Verità Foundation assumed management, overseeing the hotel, park, museum, and cultural activities. The spaces of the Bauhaus Hotel, Villa Semiramis, Casa Monescia, Casa Gioia, and Casa Marta can now host up to 86 guests, with nightly rates starting from around CHF 89 for a single room and CHF 180 for a double. Casa Anatta—transformed into a permanent museum as early as the 1980s—alongside buildings like Casa Selma and the House of the Russians, offer museum routes and testimonies of the original colony.

A hybrid of nature, modernist architecture, historical memory, and esotericism, Monte Verità still evokes for some the utopian, free spirit of its pioneers; for others, it symbolizes the definitive transformation of twentieth-century dreams into marketable products.