Snow-capped Alps, turquoise lakes and medieval old towns — based in Lucerne, with the mountains a train ride away
01 / 23
Engelberg, Central Switzerland
adventureCentral Switzerland's glacier at 3,020 m, reached by the world's first revolving cable car (Rotair). Walk the Titlis Cliff Walk — Europe's highest suspension bridge — and the Glacier Cave ice tunnel. Snow year-round. The Ice Flyer chairlift over the crevasses is CHF 12 extra. Engelberg is 45 minutes by direct train from Lucerne.
02 / 23
Lucerne
cultureSwitzerland's most-visited museum, and the best wet-weather day in Lucerne — road, rail, aviation, shipping and space across a campus of halls, with locomotives you can climb into, a cable-car simulator, the Swiss space capsule and a planetarium. The Hans Erni art museum is included in the ticket.
03 / 23
Lucerne
cultureA dying lion carved straight into the rock face in 1821, in memory of the Swiss Guards killed defending the Tuileries in 1792. Mark Twain called it "the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world", and it is still the most photographed monument in Switzerland. Ten minutes' walk from the Old Town, in a quiet garden beside a pond.
04 / 23
Bernese Oberland
adventureEurope's highest railway station at 3,454 m. The Sphinx Observatory terrace looks straight down the Aletsch Glacier, the longest in the Alps; inside are the Ice Palace, the Alpine Sensation walkway and a snow field you can walk out onto in July. Done as a loop from Lucerne it is a full day and the finest one in Switzerland.
05 / 23
Lucerne
natureLake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee) is ringed by steep mountains and lakeside villages. SGV paddle steamers and motor boats leave the pier beside the station roughly hourly for Flüelen, Brunnen, Vitznau and Beckenried. A late-afternoon sailing catches the best light on the Rigi and Bürgenstock.
06 / 23
Lucerne
adventureThe 'dragon mountain' above Lucerne at 2,132 m. The Golden Round Trip (CHF 119.50) combines a lake boat to Alpnachstad, the world's steepest cogwheel railway up, and the Kriens cable cars down — the classic way to do it. The plain cable-car return from Kriens is CHF 84 and runs all year. Summit restaurants, a rope park and a view of 73 Alpine peaks.
07 / 23
Grindelwald
adventureA 25-minute gondola to First at 2,167 m, where the Cliff Walk — a walkway bolted to the rock face and included in the ticket — hangs over the valley with the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau opposite. First Flyer zipline, First Glider and Trottibike scooters are paid add-ons; the walk down to Bachalpsee is free and worth the two hours.
08 / 23
Lauterbrunnen, Bernese Oberland
natureA sheer-walled glacial trench with 72 waterfalls, the 297 m Staubbach among them — the one that stopped Goethe and Byron in their tracks. The village is the gateway to Mürren and Wengen. Inside the mountain, the Trümmelbach Falls send ten glacier-fed cascades down a floodlit gorge (CHF 14, open Apr–Nov).
09 / 23
Zermatt
adventureEurope's highest cable-car station at 3,883 m, with year-round glacier skiing, the Glacier Palace ice tunnel and a viewing platform over 14 four-thousanders — the Matterhorn foremost among them. Zermatt itself is car-free. From Lucerne it is a 3-hour rail journey each way, so this is a very full day or an overnight.
10 / 23
Interlaken
natureInterlaken sits on the isthmus between two very different lakes. Turquoise Lake Brienz is the wilder one — take the boat to the Giessbach falls and their grand old hotel, or ride the steam cogwheel up the Brienzer Rothorn. Gentler Lake Thun has the moated castle at Thun and the lakeside town of Spiez. Boats on both are covered by the Swiss Travel Pass.
11 / 23
Interlaken
adventureInterlaken's own balcony at 1,322 m, ten minutes up by a vintage red funicular from Interlaken Ost. The Two Lakes Bridge viewing platform frames Lake Thun on one side and Lake Brienz on the other, with the Eiger–Mönch–Jungfrau wall behind. The summit restaurant is a good place to sit out the golden hour.
12 / 23
Schaffhausen
natureEurope's largest waterfall by volume — up to 600 m³ a second over a 23 m limestone ledge. Boats run out to the rock in mid-fall that you can climb. Both banks, Laufen in the south and Neuhausen in the north, have free viewing platforms; the castle terrace at Schloss Laufen gets you closest to the spray.
13 / 23
Bern
cultureA UNESCO-listed medieval capital wrapped in a bend of the Aare, with six kilometres of arcaded sandstone walkways (the Lauben), the Zytglogge astronomical clock that performs on the hour, the Gothic Münster and the Federal Palace. The Bear Park on the river bank is free, and Einstein's flat on Kramgasse is a few francs.
14 / 23
Vitznau / Weggis, Lake Lucerne
natureThe "Queen of the Mountains" at 1,797 m has drawn visitors since 1816 and carried Europe's first mountain railway in 1871. From the top you can count thirteen lakes and the whole Alpine chain. Go up by cogwheel from Vitznau or Arth-Goldau, or by cable car from Weggis, and come down the other way — the classic round trip from Lucerne by boat and rail.
15 / 23
Lucerne
cultureEurope's oldest surviving wooden covered bridge (1333) crosses the Reuss under its 17th-century gable paintings. Add the medieval Water Tower, the Spreuer Bridge, the Lion Monument (Löwendenkmal) and the painted facades of the Weinmarkt. Best early, before the coach parties arrive.
16 / 23
Zürich
natureThe ZSG short round trip leaves Bürkliplatz at the foot of Bahnhofstrasse and runs past the lakeside villas and vineyards of the Goldküste, with the Alps on the horizon on a clear day. Longer sailings continue to Rapperswil and its rose gardens in about two hours.
17 / 23
Zürich
cultureThe lanes of the Niederdorf on one bank, the guild houses on the other. Climb the Grossmünster's Karlsturm (CHF 5) for the rooftop view, look at Chagall's windows in the Fraumünster, and take the Lindenhof terrace for the classic picture over the Limmat. Bahnhofstrasse runs from the station to the lake.
18 / 23
Geneva
leisureOne of the world's tallest fountains throws 140 m of Lac Léman into the air off the Rive Gauche. Walk the lake promenade to the Flower Clock, climb into the cobbled Vieille-Ville around St Pierre Cathedral, and look in on the UN's Palais des Nations and the Broken Chair opposite.
19 / 23
Montreux
cultureSwitzerland's most-visited historic monument — a 12th-century island castle moored to the shore of Lake Geneva and made famous by Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon". Twenty-five rooms of frescoes, Gothic halls, towers and lakeside dungeons. The 3 km lakeside walk from Montreux is one of the loveliest in the country.
20 / 23
Lucerne
natureGlacial potholes ground out of the rock 20,000 years ago, found by accident in 1872 — plus fossils and palm imprints from when Lucerne was a subtropical beach, a lookout tower, and the Alhambra mirror maze, which is far more fun than it sounds. Sits immediately beside the Lion Monument, so the two are one stop.
21 / 23
Lucerne
cultureNearly a kilometre of intact 14th-century city wall along the ridge above the Old Town, with nine towers. Four of them — Schirmer, Zyt, Wacht and Männli — can be climbed for free, and the Zyt tower holds the city's oldest clock, which is allowed to strike one minute before every other clock in Lucerne. The best free view over the rooftops and the lake.
22 / 23
Lucerne
cultureTwo hundred works assembled by the dealer Siegfried Rosengart and his daughter Angela — including 32 Picassos the family knew personally, and a room of Paul Klee that is one of the finest anywhere. Small, calm and beautifully hung; an hour here beats three in a bigger museum.
23 / 23
Lucerne
cultureA 112-metre circular painting from 1881 showing the French Bourbaki army crossing into Switzerland in the winter of 1871 and being disarmed and fed — one of the earliest depictions of humanitarian relief, and one of only a handful of panoramas of this size left in the world. You stand in the middle and it wraps all the way round you.