Hello and bonjour!
It is July 2020, and I’m in the little village of La Cure in the Jura mountains
where I’m about to spend the night in this specific hotel.
And yes I am travelling again;
last week, France formally ended its state of emergency.
Hotels have been open for about a month now,
and French residents are allowed to travel pretty much anywhere in Europe,
with a few exceptions.
But the government has suggested that we might want to take our holidays in France this year,
which I think is partly to do with controlling the virus
and partly because they want to boost their own economy,
so Mr le President, you’re going to be very happy with me, I am staying in France.
Right until the moment where I roll over in bed.
Welcome to the Hotel Arbez.
This is the Hotel Arbez, also known as l’Arbézie Franco-Suisse,
and it is built on the border of France and Switzerland,
and I mean that literally.
The line runs right through the middle of the building,
bisecting the restaurant, the hallway, the staircase, and three of the rooms including mine.
So how did this end up happening?
Well the story starts in 1862 with a good old territorial dispute
over a small area not too far from here called the Vallée des Dappes.
The valley had been seized by Napoleon’s France at the start of the 1800s,
and then returned to Switzerland after his defeat at Waterloo,
but the French had always kind of wanted it back
as it was a very useful military route for them.
Eventually they offered the Swiss an exchange;
if Switzerland gave France the Vallée des Dappes,
then France would give Switzerland a Vallée-des-Dappes-sized bit of France.
The two sides agreed and signed a treaty on 8th December 1862.
Job done right?
Well not quite.
The small chunk of land that France was giving up included half the village of La Cure,
so as far as I can tell,
some of the villagers woke up to discover that they had been given away to Switzerland.
Others found that the new border was going to go straight through their house,
so a clause was written into the treaty
stipulating that any building that was built before the treaty came into effect
was protected and could remain where it was.
And that gave one man an idea.
Monsieur Ponthus of La Cure happened to own a vacant piece of land
that was going to be bisected by the new border
and in the three months between the treaty being signed,
and the treaty being ratified by the Swiss parliament in February 1863,
he built this.
(I’m guessing he had some help.)
But because it was completed before the treaty came into force,
there was nothing the authorities could do about it.
The building didn’t start life as a hotel;
originally there was a grocery store on the Swiss side and a bar on the French side.
Now you’d think there might have been a temptation to take advantage of the cross-border
location for other kinds of business
but the French are an highly moral nation with a great respect for rules
and ah who am I kidding there was all kinds of smuggling and contraband going on.
But when Mr Ponthus eventually died in 1895,
his two sons decided to move away from that and turned the building into a hotel,
and in 1921, they sold it to a man called Jules-Joseph Arbez,
whose family have run the place ever since,
benefitting from the growth in winter sports and tourism in the area.
But the hotel’s finest hour came during World War II, and I will let Mr Arbez’ great
great grandson take up the story.
Over the course of the war the Arbez family helped hundreds of Jewish people and members
of the Résistance to escape to safety in neutral Switzerland.
When hostilities ended they were thanked in person by Charles de Gaulle,
and later awarded a medal by the Yad Vashem Institute in Israel.
Meanwhile, as peace returned, France and Switzerland came to an unusual agreement that from now on,
the building would be considered Swiss territory for French citizens, and French territory
for Swiss citizens.
The Arbez family reacted by semi-seriously declaring independence from both
as the micronation of Arbézie,
and in fact the red tree on a yellow background that you see around the hotel is their flag
– the triangular shape is inspired by the shape of the principality itself.
But Arbézie’s status as both sort of French and sort of not helped to create another historic
moment in 1961
when it was chosen to host the start of negotiations between France and Algeria
that eventually led to Algeria’s independence.
Since then things have returned to calm and uneventful normality
and while the village can get busy in the ski season it’s otherwise it’s a pretty
quiet kind of place.
In fact the most dramatic thing that is likely to happen is that this cat might follow you
around for a bit
before a bored customs official comes over and asks what exactly you’re doing filming
a lamppost.
And with that it’s probably time for me to go to bed.
Incidentally while they’ve made it look like the border is this way
I’ve since realised that it’s actually this way,
and frankly, what better way to celebrate the 14th of July,
than having my head separated from my body by the French.
If you’d like to visit the Hotel Arbez, it’s about an hour north of Geneva by car
or an hour and a half by train
including a ride on the very scenic Nyon-St Cergue railway.
If you want to sleep on the border, ask for room 6, 9 or 12; I was in room 6 which cost
90eur for the night.
Unfortunately it’s an old building with no lift so if you have accessibility issues
I wouldn’t recommend staying here
but you can still enjoy an international meal in the ground floor restaurant.
And that’s about it for today - thank you very much for watching and I will see you soon.