The history of the Art Nouveau villa is inevitably also a part of Bad Reichenhall. The spa treatments offered by a well-known spa hotel, the Grandhotel Axelmannstein, around 1846 marked the beginning of the actual rise of the salt works town to a spa town known throughout Europe. King Maximilian II (1848), Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1871) and many celebrities of the time came to Bad Reichenhall for spa treatments.

Now run by the third generation, the family business can look back on an eventful history. The art nouveau villa has been owned by the Rein family since 1938.

The property was first documented between 1817 and 1841, on position sheets from the Kingdom of Bavaria. Plans for the conversion of a simple town house into an 8-room hotel document the original, simple property. However, the conversion never materialised.

Instead, the former owner Fritz Ackermann cancelled the renovation plans in 1898 and demolished the old building. In its place, then still on Grüne Gasse, the current magnificent villa with its corner oriel tower, tail-gabled risalit, mansard roof and Art Nouveau balconies was built as a hotel. The turn of the century was strongly characterised by the construction of many magnificent Art Nouveau villas in Bad Reichenhall.

The former owner overstayed his welcome in the early 1930s and so the building was purchased by chef Alfons and Anna Rein in 1938. The villa was in a very poor state and had to be renovated with painstaking and independent labour. This was anything but easy during the war.

During the Second World War, school classes from Munich were taught here. It became a so-called ‘Landverschickungsheim’ for several years. The boarding house was closed during this time. During the bombing raid on Bad Reichenhall on 25 April 1945, the villa was not directly hit despite its close proximity to the main railway station. Only the adjoining wooden summer building was destroyed by an unexploded bomb.

From the 1950s onwards, the hotel experienced a great upswing. Tourism became important again
importance again and numerous ‘summer visitors’ and spa guests came in search of relaxation.

The extension was built next to the main building in order to cope with the many guest enquiries during the high season. In 1973, Gertraud and Helmut Rein took over the business. As a trained chef and sous-chef in various first-class hotels around the world, such as the InterContinental Jakarta or the Schweizer Hof in Lenzerheide, Helmut was able to continue running his parents’ business with his wife Gertraud thanks to the expertise he had learnt and his passion and enjoyment of the hotel business. Until the early 1970s, the ‘Villa Rein’ offered hotel guests half-board as well as breakfast.

Due to the almost unchanged exterior façade and partially preserved original interior architecture, the villa was added to the Bavarian list of monuments in 1982.

When the youngest son of the family, Sebastian Xaver Rein, took over the traditional hotel on 1 January 2016, the way was clear for a special kind of rejuvenation. After a nine-month general refurbishment, Villa Rein opened in 2019 as the first boutique hotel in the Berchtesgadener Land region.

Further awards followed. In 2024, the Villa Rein boutique hotel will be published as the most beautiful hotel in Germany 2024.