Vaduz and Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein is 160 square kilometres, about 40,000 people, and the sixth-smallest country in the world. It has no airport, no army — it was disbanded in 1868 as too expensive — and no border controls with Switzerland, which handles its customs, its currency and much of its diplomacy.

It is a constitutional monarchy with a prince who genuinely governs: the reigning prince has powers of veto and dissolution that no other European monarch retains, confirmed by referendum in 2003.

Vaduz, the capital, has about 5,700 residents.

The castle

Schloss Vaduz stands on the hillside above the town, twelfth-century at its core, and is the residence of the princely family — which means you cannot go in. The grounds are private and the family lives there.

You can walk up to it in about twenty minutes for the view over the Rhine valley, and the path continues into the hills behind. On 15 August, the national day, the prince opens the castle gardens and invites the entire country for a drink, which is exactly as charming as it sounds.

The art

The Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein — a black cube of dyed concrete and basalt in the middle of Vaduz — holds modern and contemporary art, and shares its building with the Hilti Art Foundation.

More important is the princely collection: one of the largest private art collections in the world, built over four centuries, with Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Cranach. Most of it hangs in the family’s palaces in Vienna, but pieces rotate through Vaduz.

The passport stamp

The tourist office in Vaduz will stamp your passport with a Liechtenstein stamp for a few francs. It has no legal meaning whatsoever — there is no border to cross — and it is the single most popular thing in the country.

Walking across a country

Liechtenstein is 24 km long and about 6 km wide, and it is entirely possible to walk the length of it in a day — the marked Liechtenstein-Weg, opened for the 300th anniversary in 2019, runs 75 km through all eleven municipalities, and most people do it over five stages.

The mountain half is proper alpine terrain: Malbun, at 1,600 m, is the country’s only ski resort, small and family-oriented, and the Fürstensteig is a well-known and genuinely exposed cliff path with cables.

Wine and stamps

The prince’s own vineyard, the Hofkellerei, is in Vaduz and open for tasting — Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, on the Rhine valley slopes.

The Postmuseum covers the other thing Liechtenstein is known for: postage stamps, which were a serious share of state revenue for much of the twentieth century and are still collected worldwide.

Getting there

• By bus — this is the only way. Take the train to Sargans (Zurich about an hour), then bus 11 or 12 to Vaduz, about twenty minutes. Buses run every fifteen minutes.
• There is no railway station in Vaduz. Trains cross the country without stopping at Schaan-Vaduz, which is a request stop on a minor line.
• No border formalities. Swiss francs, Swiss phone network in practice, Schengen.

Is it worth a day?

Honestly: half a day. Vaduz is a single pleasant street with the castle above it, and the museums take two hours. Everything else here is walking country.

Combined with Chur, Bad Ragaz and its thermal baths, or the Rhine valley castles, it makes a full and rather good day out of Zurich.