Summary
Audrey Hepburn was photographed golfing barefoot at the Bürgenstock resort above Lake Lucerne in 1954, the year she married Mel Ferrer in its chapel and made the estate her home. The ridge also sheltered Sophia Loren and Sean Connery. Today Bürgenstock Resort Lake Lucerne pairs that history with a redesigned nine-hole, par-33 alpine course, open April to October, and a 10,000-square-meter spa for winter.
By 1954, Audrey Hepburn had very little left to win. That year she collected the Academy Award for Roman Holiday and a Tony Award for Ondine, the Broadway play she starred in opposite Mel Ferrer. Yet some of her most enduring photographs from that year were taken not on a red carpet but on a small golf course some 500 meters above Lake Lucerne.
In the frames, Hepburn stands on a green in a white sundress, barefoot, a putter in her hands. Ferrer bends beside her, holding a striped parasol against the alpine sun. Nobody is keeping score. The place was the Bürgenstock, and for Hepburn it was less a resort than a refuge.
Hepburn on the green, 1954, and the Bürgenstock ridge today.
Hepburn on the green, 1954, and the Bürgenstock ridge today.
A Wedding on the Ridge
Hepburn loved the plateau enough to marry there. After a brief civil ceremony in nearby Buochs, she and Ferrer exchanged vows on September 25, 1954, in the small white chapel on the estate, she in a tea-length Pierre Balmain gown. The couple made the estate home, living at Villa Bethania, and in 1960 their son Sean was christened in the same chapel. The golf course became the setting for their quietest mornings.
Those photographs show a version of golf the modern game has nearly forgotten. Today’s culture runs on launch monitors and swing data. Hepburn practiced the art of the leisurely round: no scorecard, no shoes, just cool alpine turf underfoot and unhurried strides between shots. It was golf returned to its oldest pleasure, a walk through beautiful country interrupted now and then by a well-struck ball. Seventy years on, the images remain fixtures on resort-wear mood boards for one simple reason: the game looks its best when it refuses to take itself too seriously.
Audrey Hepburn, style icon, and the Bürgenstock today.
A Hollywood Hideaway
The Bürgenstock had courted the famous long before Audrey Hepburn arrived. Its first hotel opened in the 1870s, and in 1888 it added the world’s first funicular with electric traction. Proprietor Fritz Frey began shaping the golf course into the hillside in 1928 and later added the Hollywood Pool.
What the resort sold was distance. On a forested ridge with water on three sides, it offered privacy no studio could match. Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti lived at Villa Daniel from 1957 into the late 1960s. In 1964, Sean Connery and the Goldfinger crew stayed while filming in Switzerland. Charlie Chaplin visited too. In an era when studios scripted nearly every hour of a star’s public life, the Bürgenstock offered something rarer than luxury: the freedom to simply be.
A swing lesson for Hepburn, and the Bürgenstock course today.
The Bürgenstock Today
The estate reopened in 2017 after nearly a decade of renovation as Bürgenstock Resort Lake Lucerne, now holder of three Michelin Keys. It includes the Bürgenstock Hotel & Alpine Spa, the wellness-focused Waldhotel, the intimate Taverne 1879 and the Bürgenstock Residence Suites. In 2024 the ridge’s talent for discretion found a new audience when it hosted the Summit on Peace in Ukraine. The chapel still hosts weddings, and the Hollywood Pool still draws swimmers. Arrival remains half the pleasure: a catamaran crosses from Lucerne to Kehrsiten in about 25 minutes, and a funicular climbs to the resort in about four more.
Redesigned by Städler Golf Courses, Bürgenstock Alpine Golf plays as a par-33 nine of just under 2,000 meters, compact enough to walk and scenic enough that nobody minds a slow round. The club offers an academy for first-timers, a driving range and the Osteria Alpina Terrazza for an après-golf lunch. One modern difference: a dress code rules out jeans, shorts and collarless shirts. Hepburn’s barefoot putting is best admired in the photographs.
Hepburn’s golf style, with the Bürgenstock spa today.
The Alpine Course: When to Go
The course opens seasonally, with play promoted from April through October; confirm dates when booking. September and October bring crisp air and the same season in which Hepburn married on the ridge. When the greens close, the 10,000-square-meter Bürgenstock Alpine Spa takes over, its outdoor infinity pool, kept at 35°C, seeming to hang above the mist on the lake.
The flashbulbs that chased Hepburn through Rome and Los Angeles never quite made it up the funicular. That remains the Bürgenstock’s enduring luxury. Come for the golf, stay for the spa, and leave your shoes wherever you like.
