Swiss Highlights
An aerial view of the former abbey of Saint-Urbain: the baroque church with two towers topped by red onion domes stands at the center, surrounded by long white conventual buildings arranged around two courtyards, with the village and fields around it.

Central Switzerland

Tourist regions

25 places referenced, across Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Zug.

An editorial grouping by Swiss Highlights, not an official administrative division.

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Saint Urban's AbbeyAmstegBauenBeromünsterFrauenthal AbbeyFlüeli-RanftGersauGlacier ExpressHospentalKehrsitenKirchhofenLake LucerneLake LucerneLake LucerneLake LucerneLake LucerneLucerne, old town and KapellbrückeLuthernRigiSchwyzSempachStansTitlisUfenauLorzenweid industrial site
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An aerial view of the former abbey of Saint-Urbain: the baroque church with two towers topped by red onion domes stands at the center, surrounded by long white conventual buildings arranged around two courtyards, with the village and fields around it.

Former abbey · Lucerne

Saint Urban's Abbey

Its choir stalls of 1700-1707 were sold as far as Scotland before being bought back in 1911 and reinstalled. Since 1873 the former monastery has housed a cantonal psychiatric institution.

Elevated view of Amsteg from a wooded slope: the village and its bell tower occupy the floor of the Reuss valley, the gravel-banked river crosses it, the motorway and road run along the left bank, and the Gotthard railway viaduct spans the ravine on the right, between steep slopes.

Transit village · Uri

Amsteg

A staging post in the 18th century, ruined by the coming of the railway, revived in the 20th by hydroelectricity: the power station of 1922 was replaced in 1998 by a plant cut inside the mountain.

Elevated summer view from a stone path lined with a wooden railing, descending toward the village of Bauen nestled on the shore of Lake Lucerne; the onion-domed bell tower of St. Ida's church stands out among the roofs, facing the turquoise water of the lake enclosed by wooded cliffs and rocky peaks under a blue sky dotted with clouds.

Lakeshore, Nobel's factory, anthem

Bauen

On the west shore of Lake Uri, at the foot of the Bauenstöcke, the mild climate (figs, palm trees) contrasts with the industrial history of neighbouring Isleten, where Nobel produced dynamite and later blasting gelatin until 2003.

View of Beromünster from a sloping meadow: in the foreground an orchard and tall grass, then the brown tiled roofs of the town; at the center, the white spire of the collegiate church topped with a tall red steeple, and behind, the cultivated hills of the Wynental under a blue sky with white clouds.

Collegiate town · Lucerne

Beromünster

Two centres, the market Flecken and the canons' Stift, at 642 metres. Helias Helye finished the first dated book printed in Switzerland here on 10 November 1470; the transmitter that gave the place its present name fell silent in 2008.

Frontal view of Frauenthal Convent from the entrance courtyard: a white convent building with a brown tiled roof and dormer windows, an arched porch at the center, flanked by two large leafy trees; partly cloudy blue sky, with a paved path and green benches in the foreground.

Cistercian abbey · Zug

Frauenthal Abbey

Traditionally founded in 1231, with no surviving charter, the abbey went through the 1528 Reformation before being restored by Abbess Anna von Fulach in 1552. Since 2021 it has been a civil-law foundation, still home to a community of nuns.

Under a grey sky with low clouds, the Saint Charles Borromeo chapel crowns a wooded knoll with its red roof and onion-domed spire; below, the brown-timbered Paxmontana inn flies flags, surrounded by parked cars and sloping green meadows.

Pilgrimage village · Obwalden

Flüeli-Ranft

Niklaus von Flüe (1417-1487) withdraws to the Ranft in 1467. The upper chapel is consecrated in 1469, the lower chapel built in 1501. Canonised on 15 May 1947 under Pius XII, he gave his name to the village, called only Flüeli until 1966.

View from the shore of Lake Lucerne toward the parish church of Saint-Marcel in Gersau, with its green onion dome and golden clock tower; the white building with light-colored shutters, surrounded by a few village houses, is reflected in the calm water, beneath a wooded hillside in autumn colors rising toward the Rigi.

Former republic · Schwyz

Gersau

Gersau was a sovereign republic from 1390 to 1817, recognised by Emperor Sigismund in 1433; sheltered by the Rigi on Lake Lucerne, it keeps its mild climate and its church of St Marzellus, attested from 1179.

A red and white Glacier Express train, its panoramic cars broadly glazed, curves along the stone arches of the Landwasser Viaduct and is about to head straight into the tunnel cut directly into the limestone wall; opposite, a slope of dark conifers descends to the bottom of the ravine, and the track the train has just left can be made out below to the left.

Railway line · Valais–Graubünden

Glacier Express

The train crosses 291 bridges and 91 tunnels over 291 kilometres of metre-gauge track, climbs to the Oberalp Pass at 2,033 metres and drops again to Chur, at 585 metres, its lowest point.

A team of five horses, three dappled grey and two bay, pulls a yellow-and-black stagecoach along a gravel road descending into the Urseren valley; two postilions in red waistcoats and black hats hold the reins. On the right, the ruined square tower of Hospental stands on a grassy knoll above the village rooftops; in the background, rocky ridges and snowfields close off the valley under a cloudless blue sky.

Gotthard village · Uri

Hospental

182 inhabitants, a 13th-century tower emptied of its floors, timber houses rebuilt after the fire of 1669: Hospental stands where two torrents meet to become the Reuss.

Oblique black-and-white aerial photograph, low light of late day: a steep wooded slope occupies the right half of the frame, an inclined track climbs it diagonally from the lake shore to the upper left. Below, a sloping meadow dotted with fruit trees descends toward a few isolated chalets, then toward a cluster of buildings by the water where a boat is moored to a jetty; the lake stretches out, calm, in the foreground.

Lakeside village · Nidwalden

Kehrsiten

The village, at 483 m and with its own postal code (6365), had several lakeside hotels in the 1950s — the Baumgarten, the Seeblick, the Wilhelm Tell — documented by ETH-Bibliothek aerial photographs.

Low-angle view of the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Sarnen, in the Kirchhofen district: its two onion-domed towers stand out against a vast sky heavy with clouds, with an alpine peak visible in the background and a few village rooftops at the foot of the building.

Historic quarter · Obwalden

Kirchhofen

A mill first recorded in 1534 still turns here as a restaurant; Count Ulrich von Lenzburg had ceded his rights over Sarnen's church and over the "Unterer Hof" to Beromünster monastery, and that estate's name later gave the quarter its own.

Close-up view of Lake Lucerne: a historic paddle-wheel steamboat, with a Swiss flag at the stern, crosses the lake between wooded mountains, while turquoise waves fill the entire foreground under a blue sky dotted with white clouds.

Glacial lake · Central Switzerland

Lake Lucerne

The lake covers 114 km² at 434 metres above sea level and drops to 214 metres. Its basins change direction at every narrows, below the Pilatus at 2,129 metres and the Rigi at 1,798 metres.

Close-up view of Lake Lucerne: a historic paddle-wheel steamboat, with a Swiss flag at the stern, crosses the lake between wooded mountains, while turquoise waves fill the entire foreground under a blue sky dotted with white clouds.

Glacial lake · Central Switzerland

Lake Lucerne

The lake covers 114 km² at 434 metres above sea level and drops to 214 metres. Its basins change direction at every narrows, below the Pilatus at 2,129 metres and the Rigi at 1,798 metres.

Close-up view of Lake Lucerne: a historic paddle-wheel steamboat, with a Swiss flag at the stern, crosses the lake between wooded mountains, while turquoise waves fill the entire foreground under a blue sky dotted with white clouds.

Glacial lake · Central Switzerland

Lake Lucerne

The lake covers 114 km² at 434 metres above sea level and drops to 214 metres. Its basins change direction at every narrows, below the Pilatus at 2,129 metres and the Rigi at 1,798 metres.

Close-up view of Lake Lucerne: a historic paddle-wheel steamboat, with a Swiss flag at the stern, crosses the lake between wooded mountains, while turquoise waves fill the entire foreground under a blue sky dotted with white clouds.

Glacial lake · Central Switzerland

Lake Lucerne

The lake covers 114 km² at 434 metres above sea level and drops to 214 metres. Its basins change direction at every narrows, below the Pilatus at 2,129 metres and the Rigi at 1,798 metres.

Close-up view of Lake Lucerne: a historic paddle-wheel steamboat, with a Swiss flag at the stern, crosses the lake between wooded mountains, while turquoise waves fill the entire foreground under a blue sky dotted with white clouds.

Glacial lake · Central Switzerland

Lake Lucerne

The lake covers 114 km² at 434 metres above sea level and drops to 214 metres. Its basins change direction at every narrows, below the Pilatus at 2,129 metres and the Rigi at 1,798 metres.

The Chapel Bridge and its octagonal water tower span the Reuss at dusk; the lights of Lucerne's old town, with its snow-covered roofs, reflect in the calm water under a blue winter sky.

Old town and covered bridge · Lucerne

Lucerne, old town and Kapellbrücke

It joined the Confederation in 1332, before any other town; along the Reuss, Lucerne lines up a wooden bridge of 1333, an octagonal water tower older than the bridge, and 870 metres of curtain wall with nine towers.

Colorized historical aerial view of Luthern: the village, clustered around its church with a black onion-domed spire, occupies a clearing amid a checkerboard of meadows and groves, nestled in the green hills of the Napf.

Pilgrimage village · Lucerne

Luthern

The church of St Ulrich and the buildings around it form a core raised in one movement between 1752 and 1781. Four kilometres higher up, a spring and its chapel of 1583 still draw pilgrims.

From an overlooking alpine pasture, the view extends over Lake Lucerne, surrounded by wooded ridges and bluish peaks on the horizon; in the foreground, sloping pastures and the branch of a conifer frame the scene.

Mountain · Schwyz and Lucerne

Rigi

Rigi Kulm stands at 1,797 metres above Lake Lucerne, Lake Zug and Lake Lauerz. The name comes from the bands of rock and grass that ring the summit; the rack railway has climbed it since 1871, the first in Europe.

The historic square of Schwyz with its patrician houses and statue, dominated by the rocky Mythen peaks illuminated in the distance.

Capital below the Mythen · Schwyz

Schwyz

The main square, one of the finest baroque squares in Switzerland, lies at the foot of the Grand Mythen (1899 m) and the Petit Mythen (1811 m). Schwyz has housed the Confederation's earliest archives since 1291.

Colorized historical aerial view of Sempach, a lakeside village surrounded by orchards and fields, on the shore of Lake Sempach.

Battle town · Lucerne

Sempach

On 9 July 1386, the Battle of Sempach saw the Lucerners and their allies defeat the Habsburgs; the Sempach Pact was signed there in 1393. The town received the Wakker Prize in 2017 for preserving its old town.

The Winkelriedhaus in Stans under snow: a pale plastered façade with three levels of arcaded loggias and a red tile roof, surrounded by snow-laden trees, with a snow-covered summit in the background under a blue sky.

Below the Stanserhorn · Nidwalden

Stans

In September 1798, French troops killed 414 residents there, including about a hundred women and twenty-six children, in response to the canton's resistance. Today Stans also lives on aviation, with the Pilatus Aircraft plant.

The snow-covered summit of the Titlis rises as a white point against a blue sky, extended to the right by a rocky spur crowned with an antenna tower; below, snowfields and rock walls overlook a wide basin of snow crossed by a ski lift.

Summit · Obwalden–Bern

Titlis

The Titlis reaches 3,238 metres at the end of an east–west limestone ridge. A glacier of 1.7 square kilometres covers its summit area; the upper cable-car station stands at 3,020 metres.

On the shore of Lake Zurich, a dark half-timbered barn and a white manor house stand next to the Romanesque tower-porch of Ufenau church, surrounded by trees in autumn colors and reeds in the foreground.

Monastic island · Lake Zurich

Ufenau

Otto I gave the island to Einsiedeln Abbey in 965. The church of Saints Peter and Paul was consecrated in 1141. Knight Ulrich von Hutten died here in 1523. In 2012, the site's protected status blocked a restaurant by Peter Zumthor.

The industrial building of Lorzenweid, with its white façade of arcaded windows and hipped roof topped by a small bell turret, is reflected together with the neighbouring turbine house in the calm waters of the canal, under a blue sky with white clouds.

Former mill on the Lorze, ISOS site

Lorzenweid industrial site

The complex sits on the Lorze, whose hydraulic power once drove the mill's turbines; the weir of the Hagendorn power station survives on the river, alongside a road bridge and a wooden bridge.