The Beau-Rivage Genève opened in 1865 and has been collecting consequential guests ever since, not all of whom left under happy circumstances.

In September 1898, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sissi, was staying here when the anarchist Luigi Lucheni stabbed her with a sharpened file as she hurried to catch a steamship. She died at the hotel, unaware for some time how seriously she had been wounded. A statue on the nearby Quai du Mont-Blanc still depicts her gazing up at its windows.

Twenty-five years earlier, another notable guest had checked in and never left. The exiled Duke Charles II of Braunschweig arrived in 1870 and died here three years later, bequeathing his fortune to Geneva on condition that the city build him a mausoleum.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the Beau-Rivage to trace Geneva's displaced royalty, connecting the hotel's history to the lakeside stories around it.