Estimated duration: 90 minutes
Overview
Welcome to St. Moritz, the birthplace of winter tourism and one of the most legendary resort towns in the world. Situated at 1,822 metres above sea level in the Upper Engadin valley of the canton of Graubünden, St. Moritz has been synonymous with glamour, sport, and Alpine splendour for over 150 years. On this walking tour, you will stroll the famous Via Serlas, where luxury boutiques line a street with mountain views, stand beside a shimmering Alpine lake, discover a leaning medieval tower, and visit a museum dedicated to one of the greatest painters of the Alps. St. Moritz averages 322 days of sunshine a year, and the light here has a crystalline quality found nowhere else in Switzerland.
Let us begin.
Stop 1: St. Moritz Dorf and Via Serlas
Start at the centre of St. Moritz Dorf, the upper village, near the main post office. Walk south along Via Serlas.
You are standing in St. Moritz Dorf, the upper village that is the commercial and social heart of this famous resort. Via Serlas, stretching before you, is the main shopping street, and it is unlike any other in Switzerland. Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Bulgari, and other luxury brands line the street, their elegantly appointed windows reflecting the mountain light. This is not a place of casual window shopping; it is a showcase for the extravagant wealth that has defined St. Moritz since the nineteenth century.
The story of St. Moritz as a tourist destination begins with a legendary wager. In September 1864, the hotelier Johannes Badrutt made a bet with four English summer guests at his Kulm Hotel. He challenged them to come back in winter, promising that if they did not enjoy themselves, he would pay for their entire trip. The Englishmen came, they loved it, and they stayed until Easter. Word spread through the aristocratic circles of Victorian England, and within a few years, St. Moritz had invented the concept of the winter holiday.
Before Badrutt's wager, the idea of visiting the mountains in winter was considered eccentric at best and dangerous at worst. The mountains were for summer, for fresh air and alpine cures. Badrutt changed everything, and his boldness created an entirely new industry. The sports that would come to define winter tourism, including bobsled, skeleton, and curling on frozen lakes, were pioneered here in St. Moritz.
Walk along Via Serlas and look at the buildings. The architecture is a distinctive mix of grand Belle Epoque hotels, modernist apartment blocks, and traditional Engadin houses, the latter recognisable by their thick walls, small windows, and elaborate sgraffito decoration, a technique of scratching patterns through layers of plaster that is unique to this region.
At the end of Via Serlas, walk toward the lake.
Stop 2: St. Moritz Lake (St. Moritzersee)
Walk to the lakeshore promenade below the village. Follow the path along the lake's edge.
The St. Moritzersee, St. Moritz Lake, is the jewel around which the entire town is arranged. This natural Alpine lake, roughly one kilometre long, sits in the floor of the valley with the town rising on its northern bank and open meadows extending to the south.
In summer, the lake is a serene mirror reflecting the surrounding peaks, and its shores are popular for walking, cycling, and simply sitting in the sun. But in winter, the lake freezes solid and becomes one of the most extraordinary sports venues in the world.
Since 1907, polo has been played on the frozen lake during the Snow Polo World Cup, the only high-goal polo tournament played on snow. Horse racing on the frozen lake, known as White Turf, has been held here since 1907, with horses and jockeys thundering across the ice in a spectacle that draws thousands of spectators. The Cresta Run, a natural ice toboggan course built anew each winter since 1885, begins on the slopes above the lake and plunges riders head-first at terrifying speeds.
St. Moritz has hosted the Winter Olympic Games twice, in 1928 and 1948. The 1928 Games were the second Winter Olympics ever held, and they introduced the sports of skeleton and skijoring to an international audience. The 1948 Games, known as the Games of Renewal, were the first after World War II and carried enormous symbolic significance. Both Games used the frozen lake as a venue for skating events.
The altitude and the dry, cold climate give St. Moritz a quality of light that is famous among photographers and painters. The air is thin and exceptionally clear, and the sun on the snow and ice creates a brilliance that has become the town's unofficial trademark. The St. Moritz sun, a stylised sunburst, is the town's logo and registered trademark.
Continue around the lake path toward the south.
Stop 3: The Spa Quarter and Mineral Springs
Walk to the southern end of the lake, near the area known as St. Moritz Bad, the lower village.
St. Moritz Bad, the lower village, is the more modest counterpart to the glitzy upper village, and it is where the town's oldest story lies. Long before luxury hotels and fashion boutiques, people came here for the mineral springs.
The iron-rich springs of St. Moritz have been known since the Bronze Age. Archaeological finds suggest that the springs were used for healing purposes over 3,000 years ago. The water is naturally carbonated and rich in iron, calcium, and magnesium. The physician and alchemist Paracelsus wrote about the healing properties of the St. Moritz springs in the sixteenth century, and by the eighteenth century the town was an established spa destination.
The old drinking fountain, the Mauritiusbrunnen, near the main spring, still flows, and you can taste the mineral water yourself. It has a distinctive metallic taste from its high iron content, an acquired flavour but one that generations of visitors have attributed curative powers.
The divide between St. Moritz Dorf and St. Moritz Bad reflects a social divide that has existed since the nineteenth century. The upper village, with its grand hotels and luxury shops, attracted the aristocracy and the very wealthy. The lower village, centred on the spa, drew a more middle-class clientele seeking health cures. Today the distinction has softened, but locals still know which is which.
Walk back north toward the upper village. We are heading to the Leaning Tower.
Stop 4: The Leaning Tower of St. Moritz
Walk to the area near the Via Somplaz, where the remains of the old church tower stand.
This solitary stone tower, standing at a noticeable angle, is all that remains of the Church of St. Mauritius, which was originally built in the twelfth century and served as the parish church of St. Moritz for over seven hundred years. The church was demolished in 1893 after a new parish church was built, but the Romanesque tower, dating from around 1139, was preserved.
The tower leans because of unstable ground conditions, similar to its more famous counterpart in Pisa. The lean is subtle but unmistakable, and it gives the tower a slightly precarious charm. At 33 metres tall, it is a modest structure, but it is the oldest building in St. Moritz and a reminder that this town existed long before the tourists arrived.
St. Mauritius, for whom the church and ultimately the town are named, was a Roman soldier and Christian martyr, the commander of the legendary Theban Legion, a unit of Roman soldiers from Egypt who, according to tradition, were all Christian. When ordered to persecute fellow Christians in the third century, they refused and were massacred. St. Maurice, as he is known in French, is one of the most venerated saints in Alpine Switzerland, and his name appears in towns and churches throughout the region.
The tower now stands in a small park-like setting, and it offers a moment of quiet historical reflection amid the glamour of modern St. Moritz.
Continue through the village toward the Segantini Museum.
Stop 5: Segantini Museum
Walk to Via Somplaz 30, where the distinctive domed museum building stands.
The Segantini Museum is a gem of a museum dedicated to the life and work of Giovanni Segantini, an Italian painter who spent his final and most creative years in the Engadin and who is regarded as one of the greatest painters of Alpine landscapes.
Segantini was born in 1858 in Arco, in what was then Austrian Trentino, and he had a difficult childhood marked by poverty and early loss. He moved to Milan and then to the Alps, where the mountain light and the pastoral landscapes of the Engadin transformed his art. Working in a Divisionist technique, applying paint in small dots and dashes of pure colour, he created luminous, almost hallucinatory images of mountain life: shepherds, flocks, women working in the fields, all set against the vast backdrop of the Engadin peaks.
The museum, designed by the architect Nicolaus Hartmann in 1908, is itself a notable building. It was designed specifically to house Segantini's monumental triptych Life, Nature, Death, also known as the Engadin Triptych, which the artist was working on at the time of his sudden death in 1899 at the age of 41, on the Schafberg mountain above Pontresina. The three panels, each over two metres wide, are displayed in the purpose-built round gallery on the upper floor, and they are overwhelming in their beauty and ambition.
Segantini's work captures something essential about the Engadin: the clarity of the light, the vast scale of the landscape, the precariousness and beauty of life at high altitude. Standing before these paintings, you understand why he spent his last years here and why he chose to die among these mountains.
The museum also holds a significant collection of his smaller works, sketches, and personal effects, providing a moving portrait of an artist consumed by his vision.
Stop 6: The Engadin Museum
Walk northwest to Via dal Bagn 39.
The Engadin Museum, housed in a beautiful traditional Engadin house, offers a window into the everyday life, customs, and domestic architecture of the Upper Engadin valley before tourism transformed it. The museum was founded in 1906, and its rooms are furnished as period interiors, showing how the Engadin's farming families lived in centuries past.
The most distinctive feature of Engadin houses is the sgraffito decoration on their facades. This technique, which involves applying layers of plaster in contrasting colours and then scratching designs through the upper layer to reveal the colour beneath, produces intricate geometric, floral, and figurative patterns. The results are unique to this region of Switzerland and give the villages of the Engadin their distinctive visual character.
Inside the museum, the Stüva, the main living room of an Engadin house, is panelled in locally carved pine, with a tiled stove providing warmth against the fierce winters. The ceilings are low, the windows are small, and every surface is crafted with care. These houses were designed for survival in an extreme climate, and their beauty is inseparable from their function.
The Engadin valley has been inhabited since at least the Bronze Age, and the museum's collection includes artefacts spanning millennia, from prehistoric objects to nineteenth-century domestic items. The valley's culture, language, and traditions are distinct from those of the rest of Switzerland. The local language, Romansh, specifically the Puter dialect, is one of Switzerland's four national languages and is still spoken by some residents.
Stop 7: Panoramic Viewpoint and the Kulm Hotel
Walk to the hilltop area near the Kulm Hotel, above Via Serlas.
The Kulm Hotel, perched on the hillside above the town, is where the story of St. Moritz as a tourist destination began. Johannes Badrutt acquired the hotel in 1856 and transformed it from a modest inn into a grand establishment worthy of international clientele. It was from the terrace of this hotel that those four English guests looked out at the winter landscape and agreed to Badrutt's famous wager.
The Kulm has been expanded and renovated many times since, but it retains its position as one of the grande dame hotels of the Alps. Its guest list over the decades reads like a who's who of European high society, and it remains one of the most prestigious addresses in St. Moritz.
From the elevated position near the hotel, you have a commanding view of the valley. The lake lies below, flanked by meadows and forests. The peaks of Piz Rosatsch, Piz Julier, and Piz Nair rise in the distance. On a clear day, the visibility extends for many kilometres, and the panorama encompasses some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in the Alps.
The Upper Engadin valley runs roughly southwest to northeast, and it contains a chain of lakes that sparkle like jewels: the lakes of Sils, Silvaplana, Champfèr, and St. Moritz. These lakes and the surrounding peaks have attracted not only tourists but also artists, philosophers, and writers. Friedrich Nietzsche spent seven consecutive summers in nearby Sils-Maria, where he wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and he described the Engadin light as essential to his creative process.
Stop 8: The Olympic Bob Run and Cresta Run View
Walk south toward the Signal area for a view of the bob run course.
From this vantage point, you can see the track of the Olympia Bob Run St. Moritz-Celerina, the oldest bobsled run in the world and the only natural ice bob run remaining on the international circuit. The run was first constructed in 1904 and has been rebuilt from natural ice every winter since. It served as the Olympic bobsled venue in both 1928 and 1948 and continues to host World Championship and World Cup events.
The course runs from St. Moritz to Celerina, dropping 130 metres over its 1,722-metre length. Riders reach speeds of up to 150 kilometres per hour on the natural ice, which is shaped by hand each season by a team of skilled ice workers. The Horseshoe curve, one of the course's most famous sections, generates forces of up to five G.
Adjacent to the bob run is the legendary Cresta Run, built in 1885 and operated by the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club. The Cresta is a skeleton run where riders descend head-first on a small sled, and it has a mystique all its own. The run has been rebuilt by hand each winter for nearly 140 years, and riding it is considered one of the great adrenaline experiences in sport.
Closing Narration
Our walking tour of St. Moritz has taken you through a town that invented winter tourism, that has hosted kings and Olympians, that shelters a leaning medieval tower and a museum dedicated to one of the great painters of mountain light. St. Moritz is a place of contrasts: extreme wealth and natural simplicity, cutting-edge sport and ancient tradition, dazzling sunshine and bitter cold.
Beyond the glamour and the designer boutiques, the real magic of St. Moritz lies in the landscape. The crystalline light, the vast sky, the mirror-still lakes, and the towering peaks create a setting of almost supernatural beauty. Take the funicular up to Muottas Muragl for sunset. Walk the lake path at dawn. Take the Glacier Express or the Bernina Express through some of the most dramatic railway scenery in the world. And remember that long before the hotels and the polo and the champagne, people came to these mountains for the water and the light, and those remain as extraordinary as ever.
Thank you for joining this ch.tours walking tour of St. Moritz. We look forward to guiding you again.