Switzerland offers one of the most concentrated ranges of outdoor and cultural experiences of any country in the world relative to its size. The combination of Alpine infrastructure, the train network, and a culture that takes trail maintenance and public access seriously means that world-class hiking, scenic rail journeys, and lake swimming are all reachable within a single day trip from any major city, often several of them from the same base.

This hub covers the activities that define what Switzerland does that nowhere else does as well: primarily the hiking infrastructure, which is the most developed in the world; the scenic train journeys that turn transport into a destination in its own right; the mountain lakes that give the country’s Alpine scenery its most photographed colour; and the food culture that most visitors underestimate before they arrive.

How to Use This Hub

If hiking is the priority, start with the Hiking Hub rather than the region-specific pages below it — it covers the trail grading system and planning considerations that make the regional pages easier to use afterward. If the trip is built around a specific scenic train, the Glacier Express and Goldenpass guides cover reservations and route planning in detail. For a broader first-time itinerary that combines several of these activities, the Mountain Lakes and Swiss Food guides are worth reading alongside whichever regional destination guide covers your base city.

The Hiking Hub: Switzerland’s Highest Priority Content

Switzerland has more than 65,000 kilometres of signposted and maintained hiking trails, managed by the Swiss Hiking Federation (Schweizer Wanderwege). The trails are graded by difficulty and marked with the specific Swiss signage system: yellow posts for easy trails suitable for anyone with reasonable fitness, white-red-white markings for Alpine routes requiring sure-footedness and a head for exposed terrain, and white-blue-white markings for high Alpine routes requiring technical equipment and mountaineering experience.

This signage system is genuinely one of the most useful pieces of practical information for a first-time hiker in Switzerland: it’s consistent nationwide, well maintained, and means a trail’s difficulty can be assessed at the trailhead itself rather than only from a map or guidebook description beforehand.

The hiking hub at Hiking in Switzerland covers the key regions, trail grades, planning considerations, and specific route recommendations for visitors at every level of experience. The priority pages: the Jungfrau region (Switzerland’s most visited hiking area), the Zermatt and Matterhorn area, the wider Bernese Oberland trail network, and the Via Alpina trans-Swiss route for anyone planning a longer, multi-day hiking trip rather than day hikes from a fixed base.

The Scenic Trains

Switzerland’s panoramic train routes are not just transport: they are planned tourist experiences with observation cars, multilingual commentary, and routes deliberately engineered to maximise Alpine scenery rather than simply connect two points as efficiently as possible.

The Glacier Express (Zermatt to St Moritz, 7.5 hours): Marketed as the world’s slowest express train; the slowness is the point. The route crosses 291 bridges and 91 tunnels, climbs the Oberalp Pass at 2,033 metres, and traverses three cultural and linguistic regions in a single journey. The full Glacier Express guide covers reservations, routes, passes, and what to expect on board.

The Bernina Express (Chur to Tirano, 4 hours, or Lugano to Tirano with a bus section): a UNESCO World Heritage railway crossing the Bernina Pass at 2,253 metres, widely considered the most dramatic railway journey in Switzerland and possibly in Europe. A dedicated guide for this route isn’t yet part of this hub’s content — it’s a genuine gap worth filling given how frequently the route comes up in trip planning.

The Goldenpass (Lucerne to Montreux, 3.5 hours with one change): three trains, three landscapes, three architectural styles, crossing the German-French language boundary over the course of a single afternoon. The full Goldenpass guide covers the route in detail, including where the train changes happen and what each leg looks like.

Mountain Lakes

Switzerland has more than 1,500 natural lakes. The mountain lakes specifically, formed in glacial cirques and behind moraines at altitude, have water of extraordinary clarity and colour: turquoise from glacial meltwater suspended minerals, or deep blue from altitude and depth, depending on the specific lake and its geological origin. Many require a hike or a cable car to reach, which is part of what keeps them uncrowded relative to the lower-elevation lake cities.

The Mountain Lakes Swimming Guide covers the best options for swimming and the practical access information — which lakes are easiest to reach, which require genuine hiking effort, and what water temperatures to expect by season and altitude.

Swiss Food

Swiss food culture is richer and more regionally diverse than the fondue-and-rösti stereotype suggests, and it maps fairly closely onto the country’s linguistic regions — German-speaking Switzerland’s hearty, dairy-heavy cooking is genuinely different from the Italian-influenced dishes of Ticino or the lake-fish traditions of the French-speaking Romand region.

The Swiss Food Guide covers the regional specialities in detail: Zürcher Geschnetzeltes (sliced veal in cream sauce, a Zürich specialty), Bernese Platte (a hearty mixed-meat and sauerkraut dish), the lake fish dishes of the Romand region, the Italian-influenced Ticino cuisine, and the Alpine dairy culture that gives the country its cheese tradition, including the raclette and fondue that, stereotype aside, remain genuinely central to Swiss winter food culture for good reason.

What Is in This Section

Hiking in Switzerland — the comprehensive hub for Swiss trail hiking ★
Jungfrau region hikes — the most visited Alpine hiking area
Zermatt and Matterhorn trails
Bernese Oberland hiking
Via Alpina: trans-Switzerland route
Mountain lakes swimming guide
Glacier Express: the complete guide
Goldenpass: Lucerne to Montreux
Swiss food guide
Wild camping in Switzerland
Family activities

Things To Do in Switzerland: Activities, Hiking, and Experiences