Switzerland on Screen: Clouseau in Gstaad, Lisbeth in Zurich and a Night Manager Under the Matterhorn

Swiss grand hotels were built for the Belle Époque aristocracy, which is exactly the clientele filmmakers want when they need to suggest old money, discretion and very good security. Three of them have played starring roles.

Gstaad Palace: The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), The Palace (2023)

In The Return of the Pink Panther, Peter Sellers's Inspector Clouseau follows Lady Claudine Litton, played by Catherine Schell, to the Gstaad Palace in search of her jewel-thief husband, Sir Charles (Christopher Plummer), and destroys a good portion of the hotel in the process. The end credits thank "the Township of Gstaad, especially the Palace Hotel," and the film had its European premiere in Gstaad in September 1975. The film revived the dormant Pink Panther series.

The turreted hotel, opened in 1913, is one of the last family-run grand hotels in Switzerland, now managed by the third generation of the Scherz family. It returned to the screen in Roman Polanski's The Palace (2023), a satire of the super-rich set at the hotel on New Year's Eve 1999, and in 2026 Swiss broadcaster SRF went behind the scenes for the four-part documentary series Inside Gstaad Palace.

Riffelalp Resort 2222m: The Night Manager (Season 1)

Four years after the events in Cairo that open The Night Manager, Tom Hiddleston's Jonathan Pine is working nights at the fictional Hotel Meisters in Zermatt when arms dealer Richard Roper, played by Hugh Laurie, walks into the lobby. The real hotel is the Riffelalp Resort, which sits 2,222 metres up with the Matterhorn filling the windows and is reached from Zermatt by the Gornergrat cog railway. Hiddleston, Laurie and Olivia Colman all won Golden Globes for the series.

The Dolder Grand: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

In David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Rooney Mara's Lisbeth Salander flies to Zurich in disguise, as an elegant blonde, to empty the bank accounts of the villain. She stays at The Dolder Grand, the 1899 hotel on the hill above the city that reopened in 2008 after a Norman Foster renovation. Mara was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the film won the Oscar for Best Film Editing.