Zermatt

Zermatt is car-free, so you drive to Täsch, around half an hour from Ried-Brig, park at the 2,100-space Matterhorn Terminal, and take the shuttle, which takes twelve minutes and runs every twenty minutes. Those who'd rather go entirely by train can board at Brig. Allow for anywhere between about fifty minutes and just over an hour and a half, depending on the route.

Up there awaits the largest ski area in the region: 360 kilometres of piste including the Italian resorts of Breuil-Cervinia and Valtournenche, with fifty-two lifts between 1,620 and 3,883 metres. That highest point is the Klein Matterhorn, Europe's highest mountain station, reached by the Matterhorn Glacier Ride, the highest 3S cableway in the world, with cabins that are partly glass-bottomed. From there you can see fourteen glaciers and thirty-eight four-thousand-metre peaks. There's a glacier palace fifteen metres below the surface with ice sculptures and an ice slide, and Europe's highest cinema.

The Gornergratbahn is the other classic: since 1898 this rack railway has climbed over nine kilometres to 3,089 metres, with views of twenty-nine four-thousand-metre peaks. It's Switzerland's oldest electric rack railway and Europe's highest open-air one. And then, of course, there's the mountain itself: the Matterhorn, 4,478 metres, first climbed on 14 July 1865 by Edward Whymper, an ascent in which four of the seven climbers died during the descent.

Zermatt claims 365 days of skiing a year, and that's no exaggeration: on the Theodul Glacier in 2026, from 4 May to 31 October, up to 21 kilometres of summer piste are open, Europe's highest and largest summer ski area. Summer also offers the Five Lakes route, the Marmot Trail and the Flower Trail, more than a hundred kilometres of bike trails between 1,400 and 3,100 metres, the Peak Collection sculpture exhibition near the Rothorn, and the Matterhorn Alpine Crossing, which takes you across the glacier into Italy. At Sunnegga lies the Leisee lake with the Wolli adventure park for children, and from Blauherd you can roll back down on a mountain cart.