Castles in Switzerland

Switzerland has a few hundred castles, which is a lot for a country this size and a consequence of its history: no single crown, dozens of competing lords, bishops and cities, and a great many valleys worth controlling.

Most are ruins or private houses. These are the ones worth planning around.

On the water

Chillon

The most visited historic building in Switzerland, and the one to see if you only see one. It stands on a rock in Lake Geneva near Montreux, built by the Counts of Savoy to control the road to Italy, with vaulted dungeons cut into the rock at water level.

Byron wrote The Prisoner of Chillon here in 1816 and carved his name on a pillar; the graffito is now an exhibit.

Thun

A picture-book keep with four round towers over the town and its lake, twelfth-century, now a museum. The town below has its own oddity — a main street on two levels, with shops whose pavement is the roof of the shops beneath.

Oberhofen

On the shore of the same lake, with a tower standing in the water and a garden running down to it. The most photographed castle in the Bernese Oberland and, unusually, furnished — you see rooms as they were lived in.

The fortresses

Bellinzona

Three castles and a wall across a valley, and the only reason it is not better known is that it is in Ticino and most visitors go past it in a tunnel.

Castelgrande, Montebello and Sasso Corbaro were built by Milan to close the route to the Alpine passes, and the Murata still runs across the valley floor. The whole ensemble is UNESCO World Heritage — the best surviving example of late-medieval defensive architecture in the Alps.

An hour from Lugano, and worth breaking a journey for.

Grandson

On Lake Neuchâtel, and the site of the battle in 1476 where the Swiss confederates destroyed Charles the Bold of Burgundy and took a treasure so large it entered legend. The castle has one of the better armour collections in the country.

Aigle

A castle in a vineyard in canton Vaud, which is exactly as agreeable as it sounds, with a wine museum inside it.

The hilltop towns

Gruyères

The counts’ castle at the top of a single cobbled street, with mountains on every side and no cars. The cheese below, and — improbably — the H. R. Giger museum in a medieval building nearby. See the ten most beautiful towns.

Sion

Two hills above the Rhône valley, each with a ruin on top: Valère, a fortified church containing the oldest playable organ in the world, built around 1435, and Tourbillon opposite. The climb takes twenty minutes and the view down the Valais is worth it.

Near Zurich

• Rapperswil — at the top of the lake, an hour by boat from Zurich, with a castle, a rose garden and a wooden footbridge across the water
• Kyburg — between Zurich and Winterthur, one of the best-preserved medieval castles in the country
• Habsburg — in canton Aargau, small, ruined, and the ancestral seat that gave the Habsburg dynasty its name before it moved to Vienna and acquired most of Europe
• Lenzburg — a large hilltop castle with a good children’s museum
• Munot at Schaffhausen — circular, sixteenth-century, free

Practical

Most castles charge a modest entry, open roughly April to October with reduced winter hours, and are covered or discounted by the Swiss Travel Pass, which includes entry to many museums — see tickets and passes.

Nearly all of them are reachable by train and a walk. Bellinzona, Chillon, Thun, Sion, Rapperswil and Grandson all have stations within fifteen minutes of the gate.