The Story

The ambitious hotelier and chef has received numerous high-ranking awards from judges in the luxury hotel and gastronomy industry in a very short time. The hotel is currently ranked 14th in the top 20 winter holiday hotels in Switzerland in the 5-star category.

However, the hotel’s history already starts with the farmhouse built around 1590, as this was owned by the ancestors of the Cadonau family from the very start. For a long time, it lay dormant before it was converted into a hotel without meals for the first time in the 1960s to accommodate holiday guests. Brigitte and Bernhard Cadonau were the initiators of the first conversion of the building into a hotel business, the grandparent generation and parents of the current hotel owner.

Dario Cadonau was supported by his entire family when he began to make his dream of owning his own hotel a reality in 2007. With the know-how of his father's carpentry business, the family-owned IN LAIN ‘Holzmanufaktur’, he expanded the historic main building in three years, and a new hotel annex with 11 suites was also erected. The entire project was created almost exclusively in-house and bears the signature of IN LAIN Holzmanufaktur. Brother Marco Cadonau, current owner of IN LAIN Holzmanufaktur and a furniture designer, was in charge of the interior and exterior design of both parts of the building in all structural matters.

Fun fact: The Rhaeto-Romanic term ‘In Lain’ means ‘in wood’ in English. What could be more typical of the Engadine high valley than its beautiful stone pine forests, which have always been the supplier of building material for the proud farmhouses. Today, pine wood is more than ever a guarantor of sustainability in construction, and it also has medically proven healing properties.

Dario Cadonau's gourmet restaurant ‘VIVANDA’ is the only restaurant in the Lower Engadine to have been awarded a Michelin star and 17 GaultMillau points for his passion for upscale cuisine.