  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.
