Swiss Highlights
The village of Albinen clustered on its grassy shoulder, its brown wooden houses huddled around the church's white bell tower, with sloping meadows and larches in front of it and, in the background, the long limestone wall that closes off the Dala valley in a bluish morning light.

Alpine Valais

Tourist regions

29 places referenced, across Valais.

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

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AlbinenBisse du RoCascade de la PissevacheMatterhornChampérySimplon PassErnenÉvolèneAletsch GlacierGlacier ExpressGorges du DurnandGorges du TrientGornergratGrimentzGrotte aux FéesJungfraujochLac Bleu d'ArollaLake GenevaSaint-Léonard Underground LakeLeukMönchNiedergestelnKlein MatterhornDufourspitzePyramides d'EuseigneSaillonSaint-MauriceSimplon VillageZermatt
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The village of Albinen clustered on its grassy shoulder, its brown wooden houses huddled around the church's white bell tower, with sloping meadows and larches in front of it and, in the background, the long limestone wall that closes off the Dala valley in a bluish morning light.

Mountain village · Valais

Albinen

Until the road of 1956, eight wooden ladders fixed to the cliff were the only way to Leukerbad. They are still there, and the village counts 259 inhabitants.

Hand-colored glass-plate photograph, 1942: a woman in a 1940s dress and hat stands at the edge of a narrow path cut into the rock, at the bend of a gorge, one hand resting on the wall; below, a foaming turquoise torrent rushes between the rocks; larches and firs frame the scene on either side, with a patch of blue sky visible in the upper left.

Historic bisse · Crans-Montana

Bisse du Ro

Modified in 1925 to compensate for low stream flow, the Bisse du Ro was abandoned in 1947. Reopened as a trail and partly refilled with water in 2015, its route crosses cliffs secured, on the second half, only by a handrail.

The waterfall descends in the left half of the frame as a long white sheet plastered against a dark rock wall streaked with grass; on the right, the rocky slope rises in full sunlight toward a cloudless blue sky, and in the foreground the water breaks into rivulets between brown boulders and green tufts.

Waterfall · Valais

Cascade de la Pissevache

Looked at since the 17th century, it also turned mills; from 1866 a walkway took visitors under the water. The Salanfe dam, built from 1947 to 1950, has greatly reduced its flow.

At daybreak, the dark pyramid of the Matterhorn occupies the center of the frame, between lower snow-covered ridges; the Stellisee, perfectly still in the foreground between two banks of short grass, casts its exact reflection along with that of the pink and golden clouds crossing the sky.

Peak · Valais and Aosta Valley

Matterhorn

Four faces close 400 metres below the top. The summit ridge, 100 metres long, carries two summits and marks the border; the first ascent, in 1865, cost the lives of four of the seven men who made it.

High-angle view over the valley from a wooded slope: dark fir trees and an alpine pasture ridge crossed by a path in the foreground, at the bottom of the valley the village spread along its road, its roofs clustered among the meadows. On the left, a still snow-capped limestone ridge bares its jagged teeth above the forests; on the right, grassy slopes dotted with chalets climb toward other summits. The sky fills the upper third, full of fair-weather cumulus clouds.

Mountain village · Valais

Champéry

Tourism began here in 1857 with the opening of a first hotel. From its church of 1725 Champéry kept a bell tower ended by neither roof nor spire but by four stone arches shaped like a crown, listed in 1974.

Late afternoon on the flat top of the pass: in the foreground a short-grass slope turned golden by the raking light, a small dark lake in the middle of the peat bog, and the long ochre building of the hospice standing alone on the plateau to the right. Behind, the ridgelines rise in successively bluer layers under a deep sky streaked with large cumulus clouds.

Road pass · Valais

Simplon Pass

The road crosses at 2,006 metres, a little above the geographical col. Opened between 1801 and 1805 by Napoleon's decree, it runs from Brig to the Ossola valley and takes you from the Rhône to the Po.

An aerial view of the village of Ernen in spring: the brown houses clustered around the white church occupy a terrace of short grass, bordered above by a larch forest and open on the left to the Rhône valley and snow-capped peaks.

Goms village · Valais

Ernen

Around a square lined with houses dated from 1511 to 1762 stand a church whose choir was finished in 1518 and the Tellenhaus of 1576, which carries a William Tell scene painted in 1578.

High-angle view over the village of Évolène nestled at the bottom of a deep valley: browned larch-wood houses clustered among green meadows, with wooded slopes and steep rock walls on either side.

Mountain village · Valais

Évolène

Nearly 800 inhabitants, a main street of timber houses on stone bases, a parish whose first church dates from 1446. With no carriage road before 1862, the village kept its dialect and its costume longer.

The Aletsch Glacier seen from the Eggishorn: the river of ice, streaked with long parallel dark bands, sweeps in a wide curve between snow-covered slopes; in the distance, the peaks of the Bernese Alps stand out under a blue sky.

Glacier · Valais

Aletsch Glacier

Three rivers of ice meet at Konkordiaplatz to form the largest glacier in the Alps. It flows 180 to 200 metres a year and loses up to 50 metres of length annually.

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.

In the Durnand gorges, several streams of water trickle down a mossy rock face on the left, while a wider waterfall pours into the torrent bed in the center; on the right, the wooden footbridge of the trail follows the rock under a canopy of foliage pierced by light.

Alpine gorge · Bovernier, Valais

Gorges du Durnand

Fed by the Arpette and Gurriaz glaciers, the Durnand cuts through the rock between the Pointe Ronde and the Catogne. A trail opened in 1877, renovated in 1987, follows its fourteen waterfalls near Martigny.

Wooden footbridge with a railing crossing the Trient Gorges above bright turquoise water, between two mossy rock walls; in the background, another footbridge and a safety net stretched above the gorge.

Alpine gorge · Valais

Gorges du Trient

Between the communes of Salvan, Vernayaz and Martigny, the Trient has carved a 2 km gorge through rock combining moraine deposits, amphibolite, limestone and schist; two bridges mark the trail that follows it to the Pissevache waterfall.

An orange railcar of the Gornergrat railway crosses a small snow-covered stone bridge, between the overhead lines and their metal masts; behind it, the white slopes of the Gornergrat rise toward the Matterhorn, a dark, snow-covered pyramid dominating the range, under a late-afternoon sky streaked with pink clouds.

Summit ridge · Valais

Gornergrat

From this ridge at 3,133 metres, more than twenty Alpine summits above 4,000 metres can be taken in at once. A rack railway has climbed here since 1898, and two hotel towers house observatories.

The village seen from the bottom of its slope, in full summer: in the foreground, two blackened wooden granaries (raccards) resting on their stilts and round stone slabs, above vegetable gardens; behind them the larch-wood houses rise in tiers, balconies laden with red geraniums, up to the church's white pointed spire and the tall mission cross jutting above the rooftops. To the right, the wooded slope of the Anniviers valley and a rocky ridge under a cloudless blue sky.

Valais · Val d'Anniviers

Grimentz

Grimentz holds its slope at 1,572 metres above the Val d'Anniviers. Raccards on stilts stand beside the Maison Bourgeoise of 1550, in whose cellars the vin du Glacier ages.

The entrance to the Grotte aux Fées, at the foot of a rock face overgrown with ivy and bushes: a small wooden shelter with a sloping roof protects the entrance, at the end of a path bordered by a white railing, under a clear summer sky.

Show cave · Valais

Grotte aux Fées

Opened to the public on 15 August 1864, the developed gallery follows the rock for 504 metres and ends beneath a 77-metre fall. Beyond it lies a network of 3,630 metres that the army extended between two Valais forts.

From the rocks of the Jungfraujoch, a building with concrete walls and wooden cladding, largely glazed, clings to the rock face; below stretches the long white flow of the Aletsch glacier, framed by snow-covered peaks, under a blue sky streaked with clouds.

Railway pass · Bernese Alps

Jungfraujoch

The line, proposed in 1893 by Adolf Guyer-Zeller and completed in 1912 after 7.1 km of tunnel under the Eiger and the Mönch, reaches 3,454 metres. The site drew more than a million visitors a year between 2017 and 2019.

A mountain lake with turquoise, transparent, still waters, reflecting a jagged rock face streaked with snowfields under a clear blue sky. On the near shore, a few larch trees and a dirt path run alongside the water; small silhouettes of hikers stand at the edge, giving scale to the landscape.

Mountain lake · Valais

Lac Bleu d'Arolla

Ringed by larches and Swiss stone pines at the place called Le Louché, the lake is fed by an inflow rising 10 metres upstream; its outflow reaches the Borgne d'Arolla via the Aiguilles Rouges torrent, after about 280 metres.

High-angle view over the upper lake from the heights of the north shore: in the foreground, wooded ridges and alpine meadows descend toward the shoreline, Lake Geneva's expanse stretches toward the horizon, growing lighter in the backlight, and the Prealps chain closes off the far shore in a blue haze, under a summer sky heavy with cumulus clouds.

Glacial lake · Vaud, Geneva, Valais

Lake Geneva

72.8 km long and 309.7 m deep, Lake Geneva draws 75% of its inflow from the Rhône. The northern shore is Swiss, the southern shore French, and the border runs through the water.

View taken at water level inside the cave. A mass of limestone occupies the right half of the frame and plunges into the lake; its folded surface, veined with pale flowstone, is caught in raking light from below, while the top of the vault fades into darkness. On the left, the wall slopes down into a long dark ridge above a fringe of pale turquoise water. Below, the still water reflects the lit rock in blurred vertical reflections.

Underground lake · Valais

Saint-Léonard Underground Lake

The lake fills only part of a cavity 1,400 metres long; a rockfall closes the rest. The 1946 earthquake lowered its level, and access, closed in 2000, reopened only in 2002 after consolidation.

Colorized historical aerial view of Leuk: the town occupies a wooded promontory, its brown-roofed houses and pointed church spire clustered around a square turreted fortified house, between terraced vineyards and a coniferous slope; a winding road crosses the village in the foreground.

Medieval town · Upper Valais

Leuk

Recorded in 515, Leuk keeps its bishop's castle, its Gothic church and its charnel house. Its 55.36 km² municipality holds both banks of the Rhône and takes in the Finges pine forest and the Illgraben fan.

Close-up of the summit ridge of the Mönch: snow and crevassed ice cover the rock face, a plume of cloud brushes the ridge under a blue sky.

Bernese Alps summit · 4,110 m

Mönch

Middle link of the Eiger–Mönch–Jungfrau chain, it reaches 4,110 metres. Its south face rests on the Jungfraufirn, a tongue of the Aletsch glacier; its name is thought to come from a horse pasture, not from a monk.

The village of Niedergesteln nestled at the foot of an immense rock face streaked with gullies, its pointed bell tower rising above the grey rooftops amid the meadows and orchards of the Rhone valley, in a soft historic tone.

Valais village · Western Raron

Niedergesteln

The name comes from the Latin castellum: a stone castrum once guarded the old road on the right bank. The Valais tithings destroyed the castle in 1384; the community bought back its rights in 1790.

Under a deep blue winter sky, a dark cable-car cabin glides through the left half of the frame, suspended from its cables; at the center, the concrete summit station is set into the snow-covered rocky ridge of the Klein Matterhorn, and a steel pylon stands to the right, amid snow whipped up by the wind.

Summit · Valais

Klein Matterhorn

Surveys give it as 3,882 or 3,883 metres, a little over a kilometre from the Italian border. Its north face carries a cable-car station at 3,820 metres, from which a 160-metre tunnel runs through the mountain.

An aerial view of the Gorner Glacier, a broad, crevassed white tongue winding between dark rock walls, with the fully snow-covered Monte Rosa massif ringed by clouds in the background, under a clear blue sky.

Switzerland's highest summit · Valais

Dufourspitze

Named in 1863 for Guillaume Henri Dufour, first climbed on 1 August 1855 by a British party guided by two men from Zermatt, it is Europe's ninth-highest summit, 130 m from the highest point of the Italian-Swiss border.

Upward view toward the sky of one of the Euseigne earth pyramids: a spire of gray moraine, textured with embedded pebbles, rises and tapers toward a dark boulder that caps it; in the background, a cloudy sky, and at the base of the formation, the top of a young birch tree and green bushes.

Earth pyramids · Valais

Pyramides d'Euseigne

Each moraine cone of the Pyramides d'Euseigne, 10 to 15 metres tall, is capped by a boulder that protects it from erosion; the Val d'Hérens road passes through a tunnel cut beneath the formations.

The medieval village of Saillon clinging to its hillside, dominated by its round tower, with the snow-capped peaks of the Valais Alps outlined behind clouds, above orchards and vineyards.

Medieval town · Valais

Saillon

The keep stands outside the walls: the castle hill was too narrow to take it. Below, the quarry yielded from 1873 a banded marble that Charles Garnier had laid in the Paris Opera the following year.

Elevated summer view of Saint-Maurice, taken from a high point to the south: the town occupies the narrow plain between the emerald-green Rhône, bordered by grassy embankments on the left, and a steep limestone cliff on the right, pierced by a road tunnel; at the center, the bell towers of the abbey and the town stand out among the roofs; in the distance, under a clear blue sky, a sharp rocky peak — the Dents du Midi — dominates the valley.

Lock on the Rhône · Valais

Saint-Maurice

A stage on the Via Francigena recorded as early as 990, locked by the Château des Gouverneurs and its 12th-century bridge over the Rhône, the town burned down in 1693 before planting, first in Valais, a liberty tree in 1798.

The village of Simplon-Village nestled in the hollow of an Alpine valley dressed in autumn colors: golden larches, scattered chalets and snow-capped peaks spread out under a blue sky dotted with clouds.

Village in the Po basin · Valais

Simplon Village

Simplon and Gondo are the only two Valais villages on the southern side of the Alps. Its 281 residents (end 2024), nicknamed d'Chruitfrässer, are declining by 13.8% since 2010. The village joined Switzerland's Most Beautiful Villages association in 2020.

At dusk, the snow-covered pyramid of the Matterhorn rises, still lit with a pinkish white, between dark, wooded slopes; below, the lights of the village of Zermatt sparkle in the hollow of the valley, a pointed steeple standing out among the roofs and fir trees.

Mountain village · Valais

Zermatt

A village at 1,620 metres at the end of a valley closed off by ice. Cars have been kept out since the votes of 1972 and 1986, and 85.2% of the communal territory remains unproductive.