It is the mid-19th century – spa tourism in the Lower Engadine is on the rise. More and more stagecoaches can be seen carrying travellers over the mountain passes into the valley, often kicking up a cloud of dust on the country roads. Sensing an opportunity in the spa tourism business, enterprising locals in the Lower Engadine began building guesthouses and spa hotels. This led to the construction of the Tarasp Spa Hotel, with its 175 rooms, near the mineral springs in 1865. A year earlier, Jon P. Könz had announced the opening of his Hotel zum Piz Champatsch in Scuol – today our Engadiner Boutique-Hotel GuardaVal.

As early as 1858, Anna Maria and Hermann Arquint-Rosler had the Belvedere guesthouse built next to the spa gardens; it soon became a well-known and much-loved place to stay. Owing to a growing shortage of space, Anna Maria Arquint-Rosler – who had by then been widowed – had the new Hotel Belvedere built on the still relatively new main street (Stradun), in 1875–1876. The Belvedere guesthouse continued to operate and was later renamed the Hotel du Parc. Today, the significantly altered building houses the offices of the municipality of Scuol, a library and the music school.

In the 1870s, tourism in the Engadin continued to gain momentum, and with it the expansion of the infrastructure. New roads were built, and spa facilities sprang up, such as the pump house in Nairs, which was converted from a simple building into a prestigious establishment in 1875–76. As well as serving mineral water, it featured an orchestra pit and small shops in the promenade hall to keep spa guests entertained in this somewhat remote location. Hotel construction also increased significantly. Consequently, in spa towns such as St. Moritz-Bad, several large hotels were built around 1875, whilst in Scuol, alongside the Hotel Belvedere (1875–1876), the Hotel Post and the Hotel Quellenhof were built around 1873, along with a number of other smaller hotels.

The new Hotel Belvedere was then, as it is now, a magnificent building in a prime location offering the finest views, with facilities that met modern standards. The location was also ideally chosen: just two houses away, near what is now the Cantonal Bank, stood the Post and Telegraph Building, where the stagecoaches arrived and departed with travellers, and a horse-drawn omnibus comfortably transported spa guests to the pump house in Nairs. Not far away, on the site now occupied by the Engadin Bad Scuol, the Scuol Baths opened in 1879. The Stradun, too, continued to develop into a popular promenade with a variety of shops, cafés and restaurants.

However, Anna Maria Arquint-Rosler, the courageous founding mother of the Belvedere, was not to witness much of this for long – she passed away as early as November 1876. From then on, her son Conradin Arquint took over the running of the hotel. And the Belvedere – it was to experience a great deal over the following 150 years.