Stars without airs and graces: The vigilius mountain resort

Detangling the soul

Far removed from the bold world and its hustle and bustle, the vigilius mountain resort rests in its self-chosen exile amidst the healing silence of the forest. At an altitude of 1,500 metres, on the flanks of the car-free Vigiljoch Nature Park — the home mountain of Lana and nearby Merano. From here you can see the whole world: your gaze wanders over the Adige Valley, the near Dolo­mites and the dense green of the coni­ferous forests.

The legendary mountain hotel, a light-footed, four-handed mas­ter­piece by Matteo Thun and building owner Ulrich Lad­urner, was carefully nestled between the larch pines 20 years ago and is respectfully inte­grated into the forest land­scape with a natu­rally sus­tainable approach. Sym­biosis is the leit­motif, inner freedom the con­se­quence. Inside and out, the hotel delights its guests with far-rea­ching views, peace and space for holistic well-being. The spirit of the forest and the moun­tains is omni­present, the view has always the same vanishing point: nature.

Where other places need loud labels and flashy wrap­pings to attract attention, the vigilius has been cele­brating a tim­eless sim­plicity for two decades. In enri­ching seclusion, it aims for quiet luxury and is a soothing pre­sence in the style-jungle of South Tyrolean tourism. With clear aes­thetics and con­sistent content, the hotel has made a strong statement and become an icon. Thun and Lad­urner have anchored their vision of sus­tainable hos­pi­tality culture in the mossy forest floor with sen­sitive antennae for future-relevant values. They haven’t built a castle in the air, but a healing sanc­tuary where the soul can unravel and find clarity. This is what the world today needs more than ever.

Five minutes and a half

The only con­nection with the rest of the world is a cable car. It feels as if you are tra­velling into another dimension. As the gondola glides sil­ently into the sky, life ‘down there’ recedes first from view, then from thought. The houses become smaller, details lose their sharpness and signi­fi­cance and the senses shift their focus. Like clocks that sud­denly follow a dif­ferent pace. Then, it all becomes wide, quiet and very, very green.
After five and a half minutes, you reach the mountain station at 1486 metres. The cable car opens, your suitcase is kindly taken, you are given a warm welcome and accom­panied to the hotel. The air is filled with forest, resin and freedom. Never has arriving been so won­derful.

The third oldest cable car in Europe has been running from Lana to the Vigiljoch since 1912. A pio­neering work and sen­sation at the time, the local mountain of the small muni­ci­pality in the sou­thern corner of the Merano valley basin soon became a popular desti­nation and a ‘little escape’ for city dwellers and holi­day­makers seeking freshness and rege­ne­ration.

The cable car was reno­vated in 1952, and in 2006 the owner of vigilius took it over as the main share­holder and moder­nised it. Since 2023, up to 40 people have been gliding barrier-free up to the Joch in the brand-new cabin.
The car, whether it’s a shiny cabriolet, SUV or rusty Beetle, stays in the hotel garage at the valley station. A minor matter with a big impact, as status is irrelevant up in the mountain hotel. The vigilius wel­comes its guests openly and without pre­con­cep­tions, aims to offer genuine hos­pi­tality and to meet people at eye level — appearance remains in the valley.

Neverland

Plea­singly little has changed on the Vigiljoch in recent decades. Quaint wooden chalets and eclectic holiday villas nestle under the conifers along the hiking trails and indulge in bucolic memories of yes­teryear. It is just as quiet here today as it was 50 or 100 years ago. Those who come up to the Joch are driven by a longing for some distance and grounding. Or perhaps a sense of childhood déjà vu.

In this place of nost­algic lightness, the Thun-Lad­urner duo has con­ceived an archi­tecture that is utterly uncom­pro­mising: ever­y­thing is nature. Clear lines and an unob­trusive design lan­guage cha­rac­terise the elon­gated building — Modernism made of wood. The simple sil­houette nestles against the slope like a huge, hori­zontal tree trunk, sur­rounded by nothing but forest, air and silence. From the cable car, it is almost impos­sible to distin­guish the wood and glass façade of the hotel with its green roof from its natural sur­roun­dings.
All 35 rooms and 6 suites of the mountain hotel face east or west, bathing in the warm light of the morning sun and evening glow. The sky is reflected in the large windows, from inside you look out into the clearing greenery: forest bathing at its best.

Matteo Thun nick­named his first hos­pi­tality project Neverland, and for both men — the Milan-based archistar and the large-scale entre­preneur from Merano — the vigilius became their very per­sonal island, that non-place of eternal freedom (and childhood) that inspired their creative ima­gi­nation to create a truly ground-breaking project. And the vigilius? It does not age. After 20 years, it has gained expe­rience, carefully reinvented itself and con­fi­dently handed over the reins to the next gene­ration. It has put on patina and dis­ap­peared into the forest like a cha­meleon.

Ecotrip

With all due respect, you need to have a certain degree of unwa­vering stub­bornness to realise a hotel project that dares to turn the classic basics of the hos­pi­tality industry so tho­roughly and suc­cessfully upside down. And you need the right partner in crime. For­t­u­nately, Ulrich Lad­urner had both at hand. The visionary entre­preneur from Merano, who founded Dr. Schär GmbH in 1980 — today the inter­na­tional market leader for gluten-free foods — has deeply rooted his pio­neering spirit in the vigilius, too.

As a child, he often strolled through the woods of the Vigiljoch. He was fasci­nated by the old mountain hotel from 1912 right next to the cable car station. ‘I always won­dered who was in there, what kind of people they were and what was going on behind those walls.’ Legi­timate ques­tions, as the hotel hosted illus­trious guests from politics (Willi Brandt) and the aris­to­cracy in its heyday from the 1930s to the 1960s. But the glamour and glory faded and the guest house rapidly fell into decay until the entre­preneur bought it many years later and came to the hotel business like the virgin to the child. It was in the air that a bold dream would come true in the place of his childhood memories:

‘I wanted to do some­thing special. And if it has been pos­sible without a road before, why not again?’

In spring 2001, Lad­urner and Matteo Thun met for the first time in front of the com­pletely derelict Berg­hotel Vigiljoch. The gut feeling was right, the two men were on the same wave­length right from the start. The owner’s message was clear: ‘Ever­y­thing I do here will not be as beau­tiful as nature itself’. At this first encounter, the architect sketched his idea off the top of his head: the fallen tree trunk. That was it. The planning took a year, the rea­li­sation two. In 2003, the vigilius mountain resort was inau­gu­rated on the site of the old mountain hotel. With a clear concept that set the course: ‘Eco, not ego’. Even though the modern building was initially met with cri­ticism, the vigilius quickly became a model for a new kind of eco­lo­gical luxury and in 2005 was cer­tified as the first Klimahaus‑A hotel in Italy. Lad­ur­ner’s stub­bornness has pre­served the Vigil­joch’s idyllic peace and quiet.

Mountain ane­mones

An impressive diversity of species thrives in this tranquil idyll. The end of winter is heralded by cro­cuses, speckling the spring-like alpine meadows with white and purple. Summer con­jures up carpets of alpine roses, mountain ane­mones, cran­berries and fox­gloves and covers the land­scape with bright blue dots of gentian. Wild orchids bloom around the lonely little church of St Vigilius, and a few minutes’ walk away lies the Schwarze Lacke — a natural biotope that pro­vides a pre­cious habitat for frogs, dra­gon­flies, fish and newts.

The nature reserve extends over more than 100 km of paths and leads hikers and cyclists through dense forests, across larch meadows and alpine pas­tures with cosy inns. Paths intersect again and again and open up dif­ferent routes for all levels of dif­fi­culty and demands. Mountain and e‑bikes, tour tips and a rucksack are available at the vigilius.

Those who prefer to be whisked up even higher can take the lei­surely chairlift directly from the hotel. The ride is both time travel and medi­tation. The single-seater rattles gently as the world, forest and hikers pass by in slow motion. There is no rush here — that is the most powerful lesson of the Vigiljoch.

A balancing act

The vigilius is based on a holistic planning approach, according to which ever­y­thing, from the archi­tecture to the shoehorn, comes from one and the same workshop, in the tra­dition of the Italian master work­shops of the Renais­sance. This sharpens the eye and sense for the big picture and the balance of the ele­ments. What is not needed is not missed, tele­vi­sions for example.

The result is a sanc­tuary of sophisti­cated sim­plicity. The luxury is in the detail, the mate­rials and the precise craft­smanship. It is also in the mas­terful equil­li­brium that creates poetry from reduction and lightness from solidity. Larch wood, glass, silver quartzite and clay achieve the aes­thetic balancing act between tim­eless clarity, subtle sen­suality and alpine affinity.

You can’t explain the vigilius because more than a place, it is a feeling. Its spaces create iden­tities and have their own emo­tional pre­sence. The cho­reo­graphy of the light on the sur­faces and the tactile quality of the natural mate­rials create a softness that wants to be touched — with the eyes, the hands, barefoot.

The five female Tibetans

The holistic approach that Matteo Thun applied to the design of his tree trunk also runs through the content and cor­porate phi­lo­sophy of vigilius. Par­ti­ci­pation, flat hier­ar­chies and an open culture of dia­logue are ele­ments that make all the dif­fe­rence for hotel employees, espe­cially at 1500 metres above sea level, where the gears and logi­stics of a hotel run a little dif­fer­ently than in the valley.
All the people who work at vigilius have com­mitted to a spe­cific men­torship that is not neces­s­arily related to their core pro­fes­sional tasks. Learnt in depth, this becomes part of the pro­gramme and the identity of the mountain resort.

And there is another element that is omni­present: female intuition.
Just over a year ago, Ingrid Lad­urner took over the management of the vigilius, living and pre­serving the values of the hotel in the gene­ra­tional change and running the extra­or­dinary mountain hotel tog­ether with the two young hotel managers Vera Dejori and Eva-Maria Zög­geler. Sophia Estgfäller is the woman in charge of events and somehow manages to be in dif­ferent places at the same time. Christina Biasi-von Berg, head of the Merano-based archi­tecture studio biquadra, has been curating the design of the vigilius tog­ether with Matteo Thun for 20 years and is now respon­sible for the main­tenance and further deve­lo­pment of the hotel.

And their men­tor­ships?
The sculp­tures by Japanese artist Hideki Iinuma, archery, kintsugi, boccia, hatha yoga and The Five Tibetans®.

Islands for the senses

A common scene at the vigilius: people in bath­robes stroll lei­surely through the bright, con­tem­plative gateways — known else­where as hotel cor­ridors. You can read the joyful anti­ci­pation on their faces. To what? To peaceful, gentle, healing moments in the Aquiléia spa. The forest reflects in the water like a kalei­do­scope. The body becomes very light, the thoughts follow suit. Swiss stone pine oil, steam bath, hay flowers and a sauna infusion with wild herbs. Luckily, time passes very slowly up here.

A very pre­cious element bubbles up from the nearby mountain springs of the Vigiljoch and flows from every tap in the hotel: Water of a high mineral quality.
On its way through the depths of the moun­tains, it comes into fre­quent contact with granite. Since the 1960s, it has been coll­ected in an inge­nious system of channels and tunnels before flowing into Merano, around 1200 metres below, where it is bottled as mineral water.

In the elegant, archi­tec­tu­rally spec­ta­cular restaurant 1500, you enjoy breakfast and dinner from a bird’s eye view, as if in a giant tree house made of glass and a forest of 300-year-old beams. The people who shape the vigilius are in their element here, you can tell. Head chef Daniel Sanin loves the wild herbs of the Vigiljoch and trans­lates the emotion of the mountain land­scape into regional cuisine with a cos­mo­po­litan twist. When som­me­lière Svetlana talks about wine, every bottle becomes a cha­racter piece.

On the pan­o­ramic terrace of the tra­di­tional Ida-Stube, which is also open to day guests, you can sit in front of a movie-like mountain backdrop and follow the tranquil journey of the cable car. Early in the morning, it takes heavily laden hikers up to the Joch, who a little later soar through the air like eagles on a para­glider. In the evening, alpenglow accom­panies the ape­ritif.

After the last descent into the valley at 7 pm, guests have the house all to them­selves again and time for long con­ver­sa­tions on the stairs by the fire­place or in the red velvet sofas of the piazza, the com­mu­ni­cative heart of the house. If you step out onto the terrace and into the cold night air, you can almost touch the starry sky. Down in the valley, the lights of Lana and Merano are twinkling, a cosy bed and a beau­tiful dream await.

Think Tank

The father of the vigilius is a quiet source of inspi­ration. With gentle con­s­tancy, he nudges his fellows to think along and further and crystal­lises visions that are socially relevant, aim to create sta­bility and are always driven by joie de vivre and open-min­dedness.

The best example: the sensus events. Once a year, vigilius invites renowned, inter­di­sci­plinary minds to the seclusion of the Vigiljoch to discuss future-relevant issues relating to an over­ar­ching theme — from longing to risk culture — with the necessary distance from the world — and to place them in a regional and global context. The think tanks on the Vigiljoch are open to guests of the hotel as well as to all those who are willing to take a little time to explore deep topics. The path to self-know­ledge is only a short quantum leap away: five and a half minutes.

Stars without airs and graces

The Mountain Resort is offi­cially a five-star hotel, but it defies all the pige­on­holes and rigi­dities that still set the tone for this category. The vigilius is authentic and unvar­nished. The guest — every guest — is met authen­ti­cally and with empathy and has all the space needed to reconnect. That is true luxury.

The Lad­urners’ mountain resort could not fit better into the post-pan­demic pyramid of needs with its holistic and essential approach. It has stood in its place for 20 years and yet it is as if the world is redis­co­vering it, seeing it with new eyes and app­re­ciating it more con­sciously for what it has always been: a stroke of luck on all levels.

In over­tourism-ridden South Tyrol, where hotels are springing up like mush­rooms and the copy-and-paste of a strangely arti­ficial, modern alpine style all too often has become the modus ope­randi, the vigilius is a plea for distinct identity and a true encounter with the soul of a place. Whether in front of a velvety Ver­natsch and the pan­orama of the Rosen­garten, during a mountain pine massage or in the hotel library while browsing through the vigilius mountain stories is up to you. Those who get involved will be sur­prised. That’s what makes it so special here.

The vigilius is an island of nature, sup­ported by an archi­tecture in which people can be them­selves and initiate their very own evo­lution. The house creates the space and the quality of time in which pausing and movement, invi­sible quantum leaps and aha expe­ri­ences are given their moment. For this and for the atmo­sphere that you have to expe­rience to fall in love, this place gets 5 stars. Also a whole night sky full.

It’s not easy to find your way back from this gentle non-place into the noisy, fast-paced world. Five and a half minutes can some­times be like a gateway to another life. The island on the Vigiljoch only seems to exist as long as you can expe­rience and feel it, after which it remains a vague longing in your head, stomach and soul. As if it was all just a dream. You get a bit addicted to the vigilius. There’s only one remedy: come back. Soon.

Text: Britta Krämer, June 2024

Photos, unless otherwise noted: Tobias Kaser; photo with sculp­tures by Hideki Iinuma: Serge Brison; por­trait photo: Fran­ziska Unter­holzner; black and white photos: Georg Mayr; sketch: Matteo Thun