[1] The first surviving record of a hotel on this site with its modern name dates from 1681, where the "Drei Könige" Inn was identified as a place where itinerant merchants lodged.

[3] In 1841–42 the entire site was acquired by Johann Jakob Senn, hitherto a successful master tailor who foresaw possibilities for a massive expansion in leisure travel that would follow from the revolutions in transportation brought about by the river steamer and the coming of the railways.

[1] Senn demolished the hotel and had it rebuilt in a much more luxurious style, employing the fashionable Basel architect Amadeus Merian [de] to design what would later be seen as an early example of Belle Époque architecture.

[7] Political leaders who have stayed at the hotel include Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, and the Dalai Lama.

[3] Guests from the worlds of the arts and literature have included Voltaire, Jean-Paul Sartre, Charles Dickens, Herbert von Karajan, Duke Ellington, and Marc Chagall.

The composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was awakened by police at six in the morning in his room at the Hotel Les Trois Rois late in 2001; the officers confiscated his passport and disappeared.