St. Moritz
St. Moritz is a name that has grown too big for the valley it sits in. The Engadin is more than the town: a high valley at 1,800 metres with a chain of lakes, larch forests that turn yellow in October, and a light Segantini painted and Nietzsche described.
Sils Maria, twenty minutes on, is the opposite of St. Moritz: a village without boutiques, beside which Lake Sils lies like a mirror. Nietzsche spent his summers here; today cross-country skiers cross the frozen lake in winter.
The Engadin has its own language, its own architecture — the thick, sgraffito-decorated houses — and a stubbornness the rich of St. Moritz have only touched on the surface.
Whoever is looking for the Engadin drives through St. Moritz.
The Engadin is one of the few alpine landscapes that are better in October than in August. The larches, the light, the empty trails — you understand why people stay for months. Chesa Marchetta in Sils Maria is an Engadin house as it should be: thick walls, deep windows, few rooms, no staff in uniform. You stay with someone, not in something. Come in mid-October. Or in February, when Lake Sils holds.
