Amsteg

Amsteg holds the floor of the Reuss valley at 524 metres, one kilometre south of the village of Silenen to which it belongs. It is a confluence as much as a passage: the Chärstelenbach comes out of the Maderanertal here to join the Reuss, and the village settled where both watercourses had to be crossed. The Gotthard pass road runs over its bridges; above, the slopes close in so far that railway, trunk road and motorway must share the same corridor.

That position made the place, then unmade it. In the 18th century Amsteg established itself as a staging post on the Gotthard axis, at the expense of the neighbouring village of Dörfli. The opening of the Gotthard railway then took that traffic away, and the village declined. Only in the 20th century, with another way of working the mountain — water under pressure — did activity return: several power stations were built, along with an arsenal. The federal railways' power station, commissioned in 1922, was replaced in 1998 by a plant cut into a cavern inside the massif.

Above the village stands the ruin known as Zwing-Uri: the foundations of a castle tower raised at the end of the 13th century. Tradition attributes its construction to the bailiff Gessler, which the sources report as an attribution rather than an established fact. From the village a gondola lift climbs towards the Arnisee. The municipality of Silenen, of which Amsteg is part, is the largest by area in the canton of Uri, but 68.1% of its territory is unproductive: high mountain and glaciers.

Why this place is remarkable

Amsteg tells in a single place what the Gotthard crossing did to the valleys it uses. The village owes its existence to two bridges, its 18th-century prosperity to the posting stage, its decline to the railway that made that stage useless, and its return to work to water captured in the mountain. The valley floor still carries all four layers — bridge, road, rail, power station — within a few hundred metres of width.

History and origin

The village settled where the Maderanertal opens out, where the Chärstelenbach joins the Reuss and where the Gotthard road had to cross both. A castle tower was raised here at the end of the 13th century, of which only the foundations remain, known as Zwing-Uri. Amsteg became a staging post in the 18th century at the expense of Dörfli, lost that role with the Gotthard railway, then found activity again in the 20th century with power stations and an arsenal.