The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Switzerland
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful natural wonders in Switzerland are Eiger, Aletsch Glacier and Matterhorn. The list covers 7 natural wonders. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Switzerland's natural wonders are the product of collision and ice. The Alps rose as the African and European plates pressed together, folding and stacking rock into ranges that reach well over four thousand metres, and repeated ice ages then sharpened the summits into horns and carved the valleys between them. To the north, the limestone folds of the Jura add a gentler but equally striking landscape of cliffs and amphitheatres.
The Matterhorn above Zermatt is the classic glacial horn, its four faces cut almost symmetrically; its first ascent in 1865 ended in disaster on the descent. The Weisshorn nearby is higher and, to many mountaineers, even more elegant. In the Bernese Oberland, the North Face of the Eiger rises in a single wall of rock and ice that became a byword for extreme climbing. Below the Jungfrau, the Aletsch Glacier, the largest in the Alps, flows for some twenty kilometres in a broad curve of ice marked by dark stripes of moraine.
Other wonders show the land on a different scale. The Ruinaulta in the Grisons is a gorge of white cliffs cut by the Rhine through the debris of a giant prehistoric landslide. The Creux du Van in the Jura is a natural rock amphitheatre whose cliffs ring a valley in a near-perfect half-circle. In the Alpstein, the Berggasthaus Äscher is a wooden guesthouse built into the base of a rock face, showing how close Swiss life has always been to its cliffs.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eiger | Mountain | |
| 2 | Aletsch Glacier | Glacier | ✓ |
| 3 | Matterhorn | Mountain | |
| 4 | Weisshorn | Summit | |
| 5 | Ruinaulta | Canyon | |
| 6 | Creux du Van | Cliff | |
| 7 | Berggasthaus Äscher | Cliff |
01 Eiger
Switzerland46.578° N 8.005° E
Image by Atarythm from Pixabay The north face, the Nordwand, was a different story. Attempts in the 1930s ended in deaths watched through the telescopes of the hotels at Kleine Scheidegg, and the Bernese authorities at one point banned attempts altogether.
Did you know? In 1966 the American John Harlin fell to his death when his rope snapped during an attempt on a direct line up the north face.
02 Aletsch Glacier
Aletschgletscher
Switzerland46.442° N 8.077° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Christian David · CC BY-SA 4.0 The glacier's signature is its dark medial moraines, two stripes of rock debris that run down the middle of the ice for almost its entire length, traces of the tributary glaciers that merged upstream. Seen from the ridge above, the white river of ice with its dark lines, framed by peaks of four thousand metres, is one of the great sights of the Alps.
Did you know? Projections suggest that by 2100 the glacier will keep only around a tenth of the ice mass it held in 2018.
03 Matterhorn
Switzerland · 37.5 km from Sion45.976° N 7.659° E
Image by moremilu from Pixabay Geologically the peak is a remnant of Africa. Its gneiss comes from the Dent Blanche nappe, fragments of the African plate that now lie over ophiolites and sediments of the Penninic nappes, and its horn shape was carved by several glaciers eroding cirques into it from different sides at once. Only small patches of snow and ice cling to the faces; avalanches strip them regularly and feed the glaciers at the foot of each wall.
Did you know? The French Cervin and Italian Cervino go back to a Latin name linked to forest; Saussure's spelling with a C reflects his guess that it meant deer.
04 Weisshorn
Switzerland · 31.9 km from Sion46.102° N 7.716° E
Image by xiSerge from Pixabay The first ascent was made on 19 August 1861 by the physicist John Tyndall with the guides Johann Joseph Bennen and Ulrich Wenger, by the east ridge from Randa. That line is still the normal route: climbers walk up from the valley to the Weisshorn Hut of the Swiss Alpine Club at about 2,932 metres, a steep climb of roughly 1,500 metres of height.
Did you know? The second ascent came in 1862, made by the writer and alpinist Leslie Stephen with Melchior Anderegg and Franz Biener.
05 Ruinaulta
Switzerland · 14.9 km from Chur46.808° N 9.315° E
Image by Monikas_Wunderwelt from Pixabay The name is Romansh — ruina for the scree and broken rock, aulta for high — and it describes the landscape precisely. The walls are not solid bedrock but compacted landslide material, mostly shattered limestone, and erosion has sculpted them into towers, pinnacles and sharp gullies that glow white and ochre in the sun. Forest clings to every ledge, and at the bottom the milky green river winds in loops over gravel banks.
Did you know? Even today the Rhine still flows on landslide rubble and has not yet cut back down to the valley floor that existed before the collapse.
06 Creux du Van
Switzerland · 16.4 km from Neuchâtel46.937° N 6.728° E
Dake~commonswiki · CC BY-SA 3.0 The cirque lies on the north side of Le Soliat, on the border between the cantons of Neuchâtel and Vaud above the Val de Travers. It was shaped during and after the last ice ages, as glaciers and meltwater cut into the layered rock and the cliffs retreated through erosion; until recently the ground beneath it held patches of permafrost.
Did you know? Protection began early: in 1870 Louis Guillaume bought land here to create a reserve, and in 1876 the Club Jurassien acquired about 25 hectares.
07 Berggasthaus Äscher
Switzerland · 5.6 km from Appenzell47.283° N 9.414° E
Daniel Kraft · CC BY-SA 3.0 The setting has a long human history. The inn stands beside the Wildkirchli, a group of three linked caves where excavations in the early twentieth century uncovered stone tools left by Neanderthal hunters around 40,000 years ago, along with cave-bear bones even older; the identification of these finds was the first evidence of Neanderthals in the Appenzell Alps.
Did you know? The karst cave system the path passes through measures about 150 metres in total length.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful natural wonders in Switzerland?
- On our list, Eiger ranks first, followed by Aletsch Glacier and Matterhorn.
- When was the Matterhorn first climbed?
- The first ascent was made on 14 July 1865 by a party led by Edward Whymper. On the way down four of the seven climbers fell to their deaths when a rope broke.
- How was the Ruinaulta gorge formed?
- About 10,000 years ago the Flims rockslide, the largest known landslide in the Alps, buried the Rhine valley under a huge mass of rock. The river has since cut through the debris, leaving the white cliffs of the Ruinaulta.
- What is the largest glacier in the Alps?
- The Great Aletsch Glacier in the Bernese Alps is the largest, at roughly 20 kilometres long. It is part of the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch World Heritage Site and, like other Alpine glaciers, has been retreating.
- How many natural wonders are on this list in Switzerland?
- The list covers 7 natural wonders.