YOU can visit two countries in one night when staying at a very unique hotel.
Hotel Arbez is found on the border of France and Switzerland – with some of the rooms traversing both nations.
Logis hôtel Arbez Franco SuisseYou can spend the night in a room that sits in both France and Switzerland[/caption]
Logis hôtel Arbez Franco SuisseThe hotel straddles both the borders[/caption]
Also known a L’Arbézie, guests can choose from a number of “binational” rooms, such as room nine.
The reason behind its strange location is due to the Treaty of Dappes, signed in 1862, when both countries allowed a “small territorial swap” giving the French a nearby road, according to CNN.
The hotel opened in 1921, with half of it in France and half of it in Switzerland.
Travel writer Miquel Ros stayed in one of the rooms over the border, and said it mean guests “sleep with their head in Switzerland and legs in France”.
He wrote: “Visible from the window, and just a few yards away, were the two border posts, the Swiss one on the right side, the French one a bit further down on the left, with the hotel occupying a triangular plot of land wedged between the two.”
Some diplomatic incidents have occurred in the hotel’s history.
For exampled, a group of men were fined by a Swiss customs officer after they were caught playing French-made cards on the Swiss side of the resort.
During WWII, German troops were allowed into the French side after they occupied France, but couldn’t cross to the Swiss side.
And it was also used as a more neutral ground for negotiations between France and Algeria in the 1960s, leading to the latter’s independence.
It was even investigated in 2002 after 9/11 where it was feared that Al Qaeda would have used the hotel to cross the border without being detected.
During Covid, the hotel ran into issues after border controls were introduced which differed between France and Switzerland.
You can now book a room for less than £100 a night – just make sure you have your passport on you.
It’s not the only weird spot to cross two borders.
The Haskell Free Library is across both the US and Canada, on the border of Vermont and Stanstead in Quebec.
And a town called Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog, straddles the border of Belgium and Netherlands.
Here are some weird hotels you can visit in the UK too.
Logis hôtel Arbez Franco SuisseThe hotel has been part of a number of tense situations[/caption] Read More