Waldhotel Bellevue by Christoph Hargreaves-Allen

High up on the hill, in the thick of the trees, this big, modern hotel is furnished with original pieces with a touch of the grand hotel and a twist of the clinical added to it in a series of somewhat cold and intimidating corridors. There is a melancholy to this hotel which some travellers may find off-putting. A magnificent view of the mountains spreads out from the dining room. Historically a sanatorium, Thomas Mann stayed at the Bellevue when it was a clinic, and his wife Katja's room - number 257 - is to this day preserved just as it was when she being treated here for tuberculosis.

A literary curiosity as much as a hotel, this is the very sanatorium where Hans Castorp, hero of the novel The Magic Mountain, stayed. The corridors are easy to navigate, as if they were built for people in wheelchairs - they probably were - and the whole building has an atmosphere of enforced rest about it. It possesses a generous sun terrace, a quintessential Davos feature, as would any proper sanatorium, where patients were cured by sun and fresh mountain air and took a protracted siesta on the terrace every afternoon.

A little anachronistic but quiet and well-run, this is the place to come to get a feel of the sanatorium days.