Hotels on airy mountain ridges, health resorts in front of icy glaciers and luxurious interiors in the midst of grim snowy landscapes: the Topotheque of the Hotel Archives Switzerland is now being created with images like these that give an insight into the early days of tourism. The archive located in Bern uses the functions of a Topotheque to offer those interested a publicly accessible “reading space” for the special features of the country’s long history of accommodation. This form of electronic archive began with the Topotheque of the Grandhotel Giessbach, which documents its unique location with its own ship mooring and funicular in a topotheque. Now other pictorial treasures that shed light on Swiss hotel history are to be made accessible in a Topotheque.
Topothequer Thomas Krebs, who works together with Roland Flückiger-Seiler and Thomas Allemann from the board of trustees of the “Hotelarchiv Schweiz” on the establishment of this Topotheque, has already taken his enthusiasm for digital documentation with him from Giessbach. He invites you to take a quick, clickable journey through the first digitally visible highlights in Swiss tourism history: hotelarchiv-schweiz.topothek.ch