Le Hameau Albert 1er, Chamonix

Chamonix has never cared much who anyone is, only what they have climbed. It draws two kinds of visitor, those who come to climb Mont Blanc and those who come to look at it, and the town wears both on its sleeve: ice axes in the shop windows, climbers still in their harnesses on the café terraces, and a crowd of phones raised towards the Aiguille du Midi. It is the one great Alpine resort where the luxury traveller is outnumbered by the hard core, which suits Le Hameau Albert 1er: its namesake would have fitted right in.

In 1903, soon after the railway reached Chamonix, Joseph Carrier, a grocer who ran the local stagecoach, built a modest boarding house by the station for the sightseers the new trains brought. Among the climbers who passed through was Albert I, King of the Belgians, an alpinist who travelled third class, carried his own rucksack, slept on straw in mountain huts and often went unrecognised under a borrowed name. When he died in a climbing fall in 1934, the family renamed the house in his honour, and the old sign, Albert 1er et de Milan, still hangs above the door.

Five generations on, Perrine Carrier runs the place, and the luxury still travels incognito. The original building has calm rooms in white and dark wood. Behind it, around a garden, stand three farmhouses that her father Pierre built from the timber of fourteen old barns and chalets he had stockpiled, with fireplaces, deep baths and balconies facing the mountains. Chalets and suites take their names from the granite needles above town, Grépon and Blaitière among them, so sightseers fall asleep in rooms named after climbs they will never attempt. Nothing shouts. Everything is very good.

Chamonix's two tribes finally meet in the water. The pool runs from inside to out and stays open all year, so a climber with legs ruined by the Vallée Blanche can float beside a family who came only for the view, and both look up at the same white summit. No view of Mont Blanc in town comes with less of a queue.

The kitchen has always been the family's real trade; the king himself, the story goes, kept coming back for Clothilde Carrier's cooking. Her spirit is easiest to find not at the gastronomic Albert 1er, refined as it is, but next door at La Maison Carrier, built from old farm wood around a tall open chimney where hams were once smoked. A fire burns, lamb turns on the spit, the fondue comes with morels and the dessert trolley arrives laden with tarte Tatin.

Chamonix asks something of its guests, and so does this address. The ski areas are scattered along the valley and reached by bus or car, the slopes are steep and serious, and the town around the cable cars gets crowded. The main building's rooms are simpler than the farmhouse suites, and trains still rumble into the station next door.

Albert travelled under a false name and was rarely recognised in the mountains. The Carriers knew exactly who he was, and fed him accordingly. The house still works that way: it asks nobody who they are, and treats every guest, climber or sightseer, as if a king might be travelling under another name.