Four Big Anniversaries in One Swiss Resort

Two Olympics, one storied hotel and one terrific museum celebrate decade-iversaries in '08.

St. Moritz, Switzerland, hosted the second Olympic Winter Games in 1928 and the first post-war Olympics 20 years later, which by my impeccable calculations, marks this as the 80th and 60th anniversaries respectively. Alpine skiing was not on the '28 Olympic calendar, but cross-country skiing, ski jumping, bobsledding and figure skating were prime winter sports. Norway's Sonja Henie won the first of her three Olympic gold medals on St. Moritz ice, the only figure skater to have won gold three times. Twenty years later, Dick Button won the first of his two consecutive Olympic gold medals in St. Moritz, becoming (and remaining) the youngest male skater to win the Olympics. On the slopes above, Gretchen Fraser of Sun Valley, ID, became the first American skier to win an Olympic gold medal. The resort has since hosted scores of international competitions, including the 2003 World Alpine Ski Championships and is bidding to host the 2013 Championships too.

The year 2008 also marks 150 the 150th anniversary of Johannes Badrutt's purchase of a small summer guestshouse called the Pension Faller, which he eventally turned into the Hotel Engadiner Kulm. He is called the father of Swiss winter tourism, because in 1864, he challenged four British guess to return at Christmas. Badrutt is the marquis name 0n the fabled Bradrutt's Palace, but that's another Badrutt (Casper), another story and another anniversary.

Aficionados of the works of painter Giovanni Segantini, who spent the last five years of his life in the Engadine, will celebrate the centennial of the Sergantini Museum this winter and the sesquicentennial of the painter's birth. Born in 1858 in the province of Trentino, Italy, he is known for his ability to capture to mountains in all their luminosity.