Two-dimensional crystals of semimetallic van der Waals materials hold much potential for the realization of novel phases, as exemplified by the recent discoveries of a polar metal in few layer 1T-WTe$_2$ and of a quantum spin Hall state in monolayers of the same material. Understanding these phases is particularly challenging because little is known from experiment about the momentum space electronic structure of ultrathin crystals. Here, we report direct electronic structure measurements of exfoliated mono-, bi-, and few-layer 1T-WTe$_2$ by laser-based micro-focus angle resolved photoemission. This is achieved by encapsulating with monolayer graphene a flake of WTe$_2$ comprising regions of different thickness. Our data support the recent identification of a quantum spin Hall state in monolayer 1T-WTe$_2$ and reveal strong signatures of the broken inversion symmetry in the bilayer. We finally discuss the sensitivity of encapsulated samples to contaminants following exposure to ambient atmosphere.
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