Stein am Rhein

Stein am Rhein is very small — about 3,400 people — and it has the most completely painted town square in Switzerland.

The houses on the Rathausplatz and along Understadt are covered in frescoes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: biblical scenes, allegories, classical stories, run end to end across the fronts, with carved oriel windows projecting between them. Each house is named for its painting — the White Eagle, the Red Ox, the Sun.

It sits where the Rhine leaves Lake Constance, which is why it was worth building here in the first place: this was the crossing point, and the town taxed it.

What to see

The square is the point, and seeing it takes half an hour. Then:

Kloster St. Georgen, the Benedictine monastery by the river, dissolved at the Reformation and left largely untouched since — which makes its late-medieval interiors, painted halls and cloister unusually intact. It is now a museum.

Burg Hohenklingen, the castle on the hill above, twenty minutes’ walk up through vineyards, with a restaurant and the view over the town, the river and into Germany.

Understadt and Oberstadt, the two streets running off the square, which have the frescoes without the crowds.

Getting there

• By train — Zurich about an hour with a change, or 20 minutes from Schaffhausen.
• By boat — the better way. Boats run from Schaffhausen down the Rhine in about an hour and a half, and from Konstanz on Lake Constance. Rail passes cover them.
• The classic day out of Zurich: the Rhine Falls in the morning, boat or train to Stein am Rhein for lunch, back by evening.

Timing

It is a small town on every coach itinerary in the region, and between eleven and three in summer the square is full. Come early or stay late. An hour after the last coach leaves it is a different place entirely.

December is the other argument: a lit tree in the middle of the painted square, and a Christmas market around it, which is the image everyone has of Switzerland at Christmas and is for once accurate.

Stein am Rhein is third on the list of the ten most beautiful towns.