A hundred and fourteen years of doing very little, carefully
Built on a medical theory that turned out to be wrong, and kept going on an instinct that turned out to be right.
Four moments that made the house what it is.
- 1911
A cure that did not work
Dr. Elsa Rehnberg built the house as a sanatorium on the theory that altitude and silence were themselves a treatment for the lungs. The medicine was wrong. Enough patients recovered anyway that the theory took another thirty years to die.
- 1948
The kitchen arrives
Closed as a hospital and reopened as a walkers' inn by the Rehnberg family, who put a single wood-fired range in the old dispensary and cooked whatever the valley gave them. That range is still in the room, and still the only one.
- 1963
The valley is protected
Ten thousand hectares placed under permanent protection after a proposed cable car was defeated by a margin of four votes. There is still no cable car. There is still no road above the treeline.
- 2019
Removing more than we add
The most recent restoration took out a wing, a swimming pool, and forty years of accumulated conveniences, and put back the spring-fed bathhouse the sanatorium had used. Twenty-two rooms, down from thirty-eight.
The cable car was defeated by four votes. Sixty years on, that remains the most important thing anyone here has ever done.
Four rules, and they are not negotiable.
- 01
The valley sets the pace
No fixed activity schedule beyond four daily anchors. Weather decides the rest, and we do not apologise for it.
- 02
Everything from within sixty kilometres
The kitchen, the cellar, the timber, the stone, and all but two of the people who work here.
- 03
Nothing louder than the weather
No music in public rooms. No screens. No motorised anything on the property between dusk and dawn.
- 04
Take out before putting in
Every renovation since 1963 has reduced the building's footprint. The next one will too.
We are tenants of this valley, on a long lease.
Silvara funds two full-time wardens and the valley’s larch thinning programme, which is where the timber in every room comes from. Sixty per cent of the estate has not been walked on by a guest in a decade, and that is on purpose.
Come for two nights. Most people find the second one is when it starts.