For time well spent beyond the bustling banks of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman), head to the Vallée de Joux – birthplace of Swiss horology – a pretty 50km drive or two-hour train journey from Lausanne in the canton of Vaud.
Numerous luxury watchmakers call the valley home, including Audemars Piguet, which opened the Hôtel des Horlogers next to its headquarters in the village of Le Brassus in June 2022.
The hotel’s architects designed it to be entirely wheelchair accessible, sustainable and low energy, using locally sourced natural and biodegradable materials. Ultra-modern interconnecting ramps, boxed in with glass, follow the valley’s topography, zigzagging down the slope and allowing each of the 38 rooms and 12 suites to have unencumbered views of wild flower meadows and Risoud forest.

The striking architecture allows unencumbered views from every room. Credit: Hôtel des Horlogers
Connected with the valley
You feel part of the valley inside, too, with driftwood hanging from the reception ceiling, wall hangings depicting outlines and contours of Jura mountain peaks, and huge lamps in the Bar des Horlogers, Brasserie Le Gogant and private dining room La Table des Horlogers representing the undersides of mushrooms.
Your immersion in the local landscape and terroir extends to the menu, too. Here, chef Emmanuel Renaut (whose Flocons de Sel restaurant in Megève, across the French border in Haute-Savoie, holds three Michelin stars) works only with regional farmers, supplementing this with homegrown produce from the kitchen gardens as well as foraging for herbs, flowers, mushrooms and other edible plants.
Foraged botanicals and extracts also make their way into teas and treatments in the bijou spa, which offers two treatment rooms plus a sauna, hammam and sensory shower. Guests can take home their own valley botanicals too: wooden pencils in each room have a tip filled with thyme seeds, ready to plant.

Panoramic views of Lac de Joux from the summit of Dent de Vaulion in Switzerland’s Vaud canton. Credit: Dominique Weibel / www.myvalleedejoux.ch
Getting out and about
While the hotel has a small but high-tech fitness room, for those wanting to get a sweat on outside, there are myriad walking, hiking and biking trails in the Swiss Jura Mountains, or water sports on nearby Lac de Joux. In winter, the hotel is ski in-ski out and can arrange your equipment hire.
If you love cheese, make sure you visit the village of Les Charbonnières, just a few train stops away (or a 15-minute drive) – home to the Vacherin Mont-d’Or museum, dedicated to this famous AOP-designated soft cow’s milk cheese packaged in a round spruce box.
Even better, time your trip to coincide with the annual Désalpes in mid September, when the cows – adorned with bells and floral hats – are brought down in procession from their alpine pastures, before 6,000 festival visitors jostle to taste the first cheese of the new season.
The Canton of Vaud has six wine regions, and Hôtel des Horlogers is an easy 30km drive from the largest – La Côte – and a convenient stop on the way to or from Geneva airport. Home to half the Vaud’s vineyards, it’s a picturesque region of castles and rolling hillside slopes above Lac Léman, concentrated between the charming lakeside towns of Nyon and Morges.
In the mainly family-run wineries, the white grape Chasselas (aka Fendant) is king – a perfect match for Vacherin Mont-d’Or – with key La Côte subregions to look out for on labels including Mont-sur-Rolle, Féchy and Vufflens-le-Château.

La Côte vineyards at Morges, overlooking Lac Léman. Credit: Morges Région Tourisme
Sustainable principles
As with its food (and with an eye on food miles), the hotel champions Swiss wines, with an emphasis on those from local Vaudois vineyards. The bar, too, is stocked entirely with Swiss spirits, including a syrup distilled from buds of local Risoud fir trees that is used instead of cassis in its signature Kir Sapin cocktail. (You can enjoy one free if you reuse your towels or decline the turn-down service.)
Further in keeping with its sustainability credentials, water is sourced from a spring in the valley and bottled in Le Brassus, and the hotel is paper and plastic free. Which means you order everything digitally via tablets – from your cocktails, to your dinner, and even the kind of pillow you want: such as hard, soft or infused with lavender.
For a hotel owned by a luxury watchmaker, you’d be hard-pressed to make that connection. There’s a small library at the entrance and some bookshelf seating-stairs with various tomes on modern and historic timekeeping, but nothing that shouts Audemars Piguet. It’s clearly a conscious (and welcome) decision, but there’s no escaping the fact that this connection is what draws most guests to the Hôtel des Horlogers.

Book early for watchmakers tours in Vallée de Joux. Credit: Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet
Birthplace of Swiss horology
If you are an AP fan, then you’ll know you need to book well in advance to visit the Audemars Piguet museum and atelier (a few doors down from the hotel and designed by the same architect), as you will a visit to Blancpain, which also has its HQ in Le Brassus.
If you have – or want – more time on your hands (or wrist), in nearby Le Sentier, you can visit the Jaeger-LeCoultre atelier and the interactive Vallée de Joux watch museum, which details the history of this birthplace of Swiss horology.
Rates per night, including breakfast, start from £320 (Valley Guest Room) to £1,022 for the Forest Suite Romantic Lovers package, which includes two hour-long massages and two of the hotel’s signature cocktails.