Vertiginous ravines, 4000m (13,100ft) peaks and an monumental glacier are Valais’ calling cards.
Anchored by the soaring pyramid of the Matterhorn in southwest Switzerland, this canton abounds with Swiss icons – think ridiculously handsome mountains, warm and gooey AOP Raclette de Valais cheese and slobbery St Bernard dogs.
This is where the world’s most storied little red train, the Glacier Express, pulls out of Zermatt on its mythical journey east through 91 tunnels and 291 bridges to St Moritz. This is where ski fiends fly down moguls the size of small cars on Champéry’s “Mur Suisse” (Swiss Wall) and powder hounds carve the first tracks in Verbier. It’s where locals speak both Swiss German, in the east – and French, to the west and across and the invisible Röstigraben (Switzerland’s linguistic divide).
In short: Valais is Switzerland distilled, and where you can expect the ride of a lifetime – and one like no other. Here are nine places you’ll want to add to your itinerary.
1. Zermatt
Best spot for Matterhorn adoration
Though it’s one of the most famous mountain views in the world, nothing prepares you for that first intoxicating glimpse of Zermatt’s emblematic peak, which rises like a shark fin above the historic mountain town. From the second you step off the train (Zermatt is car-free), looking repeatedly up toward the Matterhorn for a view of its hooked 4478m (14,690ft) summit without clouds swirling around it becomes an obsession. Matterhorn aside, this glittering Grand Tour favorite seduces pretty much everyone – from summertime walkers to style-conscious skiers, families to couples on a romantic weekend – with exciting Alpine history, spectacular scenery, glitzy window shopping, nightlife and year-round glacier skiing. There is no other place like it in the world.
Planning tip: Don’t leave town without riding three cable cars up to Klein Matterhorm (3883m / 12,740ft) – the 360-degree panorama of 14 glaciers and 30-plus peaks above 4000m (13,123ft) will blow your mind – or Europe’s highest cog-wheel railway to Gornergrat (3089m / 10,135ft).
2. Sion
Best town for a weekend break in fall
If you didn’t grow up in Valais, you probably won’t have heard of this disarmingly bewitching toy town. While French-speaking Sion is wedged on the floor of the Rhône Valley, its pair of châteaux – which have crowned two craggy hillocks since the 13th century – scream medieval drama. Combine château visits (the town has four) with a wander around its tiny Vielle Ville (Old Town) and tastings of local white Fendant wine in old-school cafes evocative of la belle France. Sion is also a brilliant base for unusual day hikes along Valais’ signature bisses – miniature canals ingeniously engineered from the 13th to 15th centuries to irrigate the steep, gravity-defying, terraced vineyards surrounding the town.
Planning tip: Time your visit with the vendange in September, when grapes in vineyards around Sion are harvested, leaves blaze red, and chefs everywhere cook up chamois, venison and other seasonal game. Buy a Valais Wine Pass (Sfr49) at the Sion tourist office, which will score you 10 glasses of wine at tasting cellars around the region.
3. Verbier
Best resort for adrenaline junkies
Valais’ other world-renowned ski town, old-monied Verbier is small, expensive and cut at all the right angles to dazzle. This is where Europe’s glitterati come to cruise down slopes in the superlative 4 Vallées ski area, then hobnob behind closed doors in VIP lounges, swank clubs and palatial private chalets.
But there’s another side to Verbier that attracts hard-core adrenaline junkies in droves. Free-riding here in knee-high powder is exceptional – and the thrills don’t end in summer, either. From June to October, grab a bike, helmet, wheels and body “armor” to burn rubber in the Verbier Bikepark. It’s not for nothing that the competition track in the downhill mountain-bike park is called Tire’s Fire.
Planning tip: Not feeling it? Rent an e-bike or ditch the hard-core action altogether for a leisurely ride by cable car to Mont Fort (3300m / 10,827ft), Verbier’s highest peak. We especially recommend going at dawn, when the sun rises over pink peaks.
4. Val d’Anniviers
Best valley for scenic road-tripping
It is easy to get off the grid in Valais. Following this peaceful side valley’s corkscrew roads on an e-bike or car along will bring you past geranium-festooned Alpine villages, charming chapels and mazots (larch-wood huts), where farmers and winegrowers once stored their tools. Lunch with a Matterhorn view at Hotel Bela Tola in the village of St-Luc is a quintessential Swiss pleasure. You can also bake bread in the village’s pain au four (bread oven), sip rare “glacier wine” direct from the barrel in a cellar further up the valley in Grimentz (1553m / 5095ft), or bathe in velvety taupe mud and milk-blue glacial water by the Moiry Glacier.
Local tip: In summer, hop aboard a canary-yellow Postbus in Grimentz for a tour of the side valley in this 1940s-era open-top vehicle.
5. Aletsch Glacier
Best glacier for big-thrill ice hikes
Gazing from afar at this jaw-dropping natural marvel – the Alps’ longest glacier
and a UNESCO World Heritage Site – has been a traveler’s rite of passage since the birth of tourism. But it is only in Valais that you can get up close – and without the crowds, too. Streaming in a curve around Aletschhorn (4195m / 13,763ft), the second-highest peak in the Bernese Alps, the 20km(12.5-mile)-long sea of ice can accessed by cable car from riverside hamlet Fiesch (2212m / 7257ft). For outdoor enthusiasts and anyone interested in our world’s fast-melting glaciers, a guided summer trek on the ice – roped to a guide and wearing crampons, with crevasses and the unsettling rumbling of water flowing deep beneath your feet – is spellbinding. Ditto for ski-touring treks in winter.
Planning tip: Book glacier hikes (ages 10 and up) with the Aletsch Mountaineering Centre in Fiesch. No mountaineering experience is required – just sure-footedness and a reasonable fitness level.
6. Bettmeralp
Best ski resort for car-free cool
In keeping with Valais’ increasingly green ethos, there is only one way to access this family-friendly mountain hamlet: by cable car, from the Rhône Valley floor far below. Emerging up top at 1900m (6234ft), winter skiers cross into a storybook world of snowy streets, a whitewashed chapel on a hillock, little ones (or the week’s groceries) being pulled along main street on old-fashioned wooden sledges…and not a car in sight. Consider it the stuff of Swiss Alpine dreams. Downhill skiing on 64 miles (104km) of wide slopes in the Aletsch Arena ski area couldn’t be better for beginners and intermediates, or for skiers on the mountain simply to feast on the mind-blowing glacier views.
7. Furka Pass
Best mountain pass for van life
Immortalized in a car chase in the 1964 James Bond classic Goldfinger, the Furka Pass in Valais’ far northeastern corner is Switzerland’s king of alpine passes. Open since 1867, it swerves around countless hairy hairpins and the 007-famous Hotel Belvédère (now closed) to Andermatt in central Switzerland. Serious road trippers seeking no mercy can either make a glorious loop of it by tacking on the Susten (2260m / 7415ft) and Grimsel (2164m / 7100ft) mountain passes before heading on to Furka (a 75-mile round trip), or hit the high road south into the Italianate canton of Ticino via the impressively barren and remote Nufenen Pass (2478m / 8130ft).
8. Martigny
Best town for culture vultures
Time spent in Valais’ oldest town and French-speaking capital shines light on why the Romans lingered here en route across the Col du St Bernard to Italy. Away from its rather ugly new town, Martigny boasts a Roman amphitheater, terraced vineyards and a cute medieval center. Sculptures by Rodin, Henry Moore and other modern masters pack out its top-drawer art museum, and views from the town’s 13th-century hilltop château spread out as far as the eye can see down the Rhône Valley. The surprise pièce de résistance? The Barryland museum complex and kennels, which celebrate Switzerland’s slobbery and completely irresistible lovable St Bernard dog.
Planning tip: Around Martigny, Sundays in March herald the start of the cow-fighting season, when Valais’ prized Hérens cows lock horns in the traditional head-butting quest to be “queen” of the bovines.
9. Sierre
Best town for wine culture
Château-dotted vines rise high above the small town of Sierre, the start or end point for the Sentier Viticole (Vineyards Trail). Two wine museums – Sierre’s Musée Valaisan de la Vigne et du Vin in 17th-century Château de Villa and Salgesch’s Weinmuseum – bookend the 3.7-mile walk, which is dotted with educational panels about the pinot noir vines and wines they yield. The trail can be walked in either direction, with both ends roughly half a mile from Sierre or Salgesch train station.
Planning tip: To buy wine and lunch in style, end in Sierre at the Oenothèque wine cellar in Château de Villa, where you’ll find 630 different Valais wines and a restaurant cooking up a tasting of five local Raclette cheeses.
