Since 1585.
A house sees a great deal if it stands long enough in the same place.
- 1303
The valley appears in a document for the first time, as “Fedes”, a sheep pasture. A hundred years later it is called “Feytz”. In summer, farmers from the Bregaglia come up with their cattle.
- 1511
In Fex Crasta the little church is painted in the manner of northern Italy. The frescoes survive to this day.
- 1538
Fex becomes part of the municipality of Sils.
- 1585
At the entrance to the valley, Baptista von Salis has a farmhouse built, lived in all year round. At the time the Engadine belongs to the League of God’s House, one of the Three Leagues.
- 1878
The first hotel in the valley opens. The first summer guests come to Fex.
- 1881
Friedrich Nietzsche spends his first summer in Sils Maria. He returns six times until 1888.
- 1895
The Pool family farms the house. Their name stays with it to this day: Chesa Pool, the Pool house.
- 1949
Hermann Hesse comes to the Hotel Waldhaus in Sils for the first time. Until 1961 he spends every summer here.
- 1954
Sils protects the valley: no car parks, no lifts, no new holiday homes. In December electric light burns in Curtins for the first time.
- 1962
Gian Fümm of Fex founds the Pro Fex association.
- 1967
Val Fex becomes car-free.
- 1973
The farm becomes the Pensiun Chesa Pool.
- 2000
The then Prince Charles spends Christmas and New Year at Chesa Pool with family and friends. For those days the whole house is theirs.
- 2020
The kitchen becomes entirely vegetarian.
- Today
Twenty-one rooms, a garden, a tea bar. The house stands in the same place, at the entrance to the valley.
Poets and thinkers in the Upper Engadine.
For more than a century they have come to Sils for its light and its silence. Their paths led along the same lake and beneath the same larches.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Seven summers between 1881 and 1888 in Sils Maria. Here the thought of eternal recurrence came to him, here parts of Zarathustra were written.
„6000 Fuss jenseits von Mensch und Zeit.“
“6,000 feet beyond man and time.” Ecce homo
Marcel Proust
In his first book, “Les Plaisirs et les Jours” of 1896, he remembers Lake Sils.
« Les mélèzes d’une si noire sérénité quand ils avoisinent la neige éblouissante … »
The larches, so darkly serene where they border the dazzling snow …
Hermann Hesse
Every summer from 1949 to 1961 at the Hotel Waldhaus in Sils.
Rainer Maria Rilke
In 1919 he spent the summer in Soglio, on the other side of the Maloja Pass.
Paul Celan
In Sils in the summer of 1959. A missed meeting became his “Conversation in the Mountains”.
Over the glacier passes behind the valley, paths led into the Valmalenco. Above all between 1930 and 1970 smugglers walked here, and during the war people fleeing.
A room, a table, a gift.
We reopen on 18 December. You can already book for the coming season.