A hundred and forty to a hundred and sixty concerts a year, in a Bavarian valley, in a house a philosopher built in 1916. The G7 summits are the fact everyone repeats and the least interesting thing about it.
The concerts are not an amenity
Schloss Elmau stands at the end of a private valley below the Wetterstein, near Krün, and the first thing to say about it is that the concerts are not an amenity. Plenty of hotels put a piano in the lobby and a string quartet on at Christmas. Elmau runs between a hundred and forty and a hundred and sixty concerts a year, plus thirty to forty book presentations and political debates, across festivals of chamber music, jazz and literature. That is not a programme a hotel bolts on to fill February. That is a concert institution that also has bedrooms, and it works in that order because the house was built in that order.
Built for it, in 1916
The castle was built in 1916 by the philosopher Dr Johannes Müller, as a retreat organised around music, reading and argument. That founding purpose is still what the place is organised around, three generations later, and it explains something a guest notices within a day: the musicians are not there because a booker filled a slot. They are there because the hall is good and the audience listens.
The fire, and the rebuild
In 2005 there was a major fire. The building was largely demolished and rebuilt in 2007 by Müller's grandson, Dietmar Mueller-Elmau, and what came out of that rebuild is unusual: not a restored castle, but two hotels on one estate with a single cultural programme running through both. The Hideaway holds a hundred rooms, suites and family apartments, from twenty to a hundred and ten square metres. The Retreat holds forty seven junior suites, presidential suites and family apartments, from sixty to two hundred. Between them, six spas and nine pools, some adults only and some emphatically not, and nine restaurants, which at that room count means you can eat somewhere different every night of a week and still not repeat.
The G7, and what it actually tells you
The G7 came in 2015 under Angela Merkel and again in 2022 under Olaf Scholz, and the house's own claim is that it is the first hotel to have hosted a G7 summit twice. It is the fact every article about the place leads on, and it tells you almost nothing useful. What it does tell you, obliquely, is about the road: one way in, a valley you can close, and a distance from Munich that a security detail liked. The same geography is why the place is quiet.
Who it suits, and who it does not
It suits a family that wants a spa and a children's programme in the same building as a serious concert hall, without either being embarrassed by the other. Very few houses at this level manage both without one becoming decoration. It also suits someone travelling alone who intends to read. The founding culture was a library culture and the house still has that in it. It does not suit anyone who wants a small owner run inn where the proprietor knows their name by Tuesday. At a hundred and forty seven units across two hotels with nine restaurants, Elmau is a large operation and honest about it. If that is the requirement, Das Kranzbach is in the same valley and is the opposite of this in almost every respect, which is exactly why we ran the two together.
Book around the programme, not around the weather
The concert calendar is published and the good weeks are the ones with a festival in them. Going in a fallow week is going to a large alpine hotel with a lot of pools. Going in a festival week is going to the thing the house actually is.
At a glance
The TGC view
This is the Bavarian anchor for a party that wants a serious cultural programme and a spa under one roof, and it is the half of the pairing that suits a family. We book around the concert calendar rather than the weather, because that is the difference between the house and a large alpine hotel. Its opposite, Das Kranzbach, is in the same valley and in this issue.
Want us to arrange it?
We hold the relationships, the rooms and the access. Tell us the dates and we handle the rest.
Visit website ↗The newest building in this issue by more than a century, standing on the shore of the Alster inside the city. It is also the house that publishes least about itself, and we have written it accordingly.
Read the review →Behind a gate on Kantstrasse that most people walk past, two buildings that used to try women and then hold them. Grüntuch Ernst finished the conversion in 2022. The rooms were cells, and the house neither hides that nor sells it.
Read the review →A walled garden at the foot of Hidari Daimonji, half an hour north of Kyoto Station, with twenty six rooms in it and sixteen UNESCO sites within reach. The point of the house is that it is not among them.
Read the review →