The Most Beautiful Places in Valais
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Valais are Aletsch Glacier, Matterhorn and Weisshorn. The list covers 7 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Valais is the long valley of the upper Rhône, enclosed between the Bernese Alps to the north and the Pennine Alps to the south. The canton holds a large share of the Alpine summits above 4,000 metres, and the deep side valleys that branch off the Rhône lead to famous mountain villages such as Zermatt and Saas-Fee. The dry, sunny climate of the valley floor, unusual in the Alps, contrasts with the ice on the peaks above.
The Matterhorn, on the border with Italy above Zermatt, is perhaps the best-known mountain shape in the world; its first ascent in 1865 ended in tragedy on the descent. Nearby, the Weisshorn is a pure pyramid of rock and snow often counted among the most beautiful peaks of the Alps. From Zermatt the Gornergrat Railway, opened in 1898, climbs on a rack track to the Gornergrat ridge, where the Monte Rosa massif and its glaciers fill the view.
On the north side of the valley, the Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps, a great stream of ice flowing south from the Jungfrau region and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At its head, the Sphinx Observatory perches on a rock summit at the Jungfraujoch, a research station and viewpoint above the ice. Further east, the Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway keeps historic steam trains running over the Furka Pass, near the source of the Rhône.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aletsch Glacier | Glacier | ✓ |
| 2 | Matterhorn | Mountain | |
| 3 | Weisshorn | Summit | |
| 4 | Gornergrat Railway | Rack railway | |
| 5 | Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway | Heritage railway | |
| 6 | Gornergrat | Scenic viewpoint | |
| 7 | Sphinx Observatory | Observatory |
01 Aletsch Glacier
Aletschgletscher
Switzerland46.442° N 8.077° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Christian David · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Great Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps: about 23 km long, covering some 80 square kilometres, and holding around 15 cubic kilometres of ice.
Did you know? Of the 3.2 kilometres of length lost since 1870, about 1.3 kilometres have disappeared since 1980.
02 Matterhorn
Switzerland · 37.5 km from Sion45.976° N 7.659° E
Image by moremilu from Pixabay The Matterhorn is the mountain most people picture when they think of the Alps: a near-symmetrical pyramid of rock, 4,478 metres high, standing on the watershed between Switzerland and Italy.
Did you know? The German name joins Matte, meadow, and Horn, so it means roughly the peak above the meadows.
03 Weisshorn
Switzerland · 31.9 km from Sion46.102° N 7.716° E
Image by xiSerge from Pixabay Among the four-thousanders of the Swiss Alps, the Weisshorn is the one climbers most often name as the most beautiful.
Did you know? A year before Tyndall, in 1860, C. E. Mathews and the guide Melchior Anderegg tried the south side but retreated after a small avalanche, ending a 19-hour day.
04 Gornergrat Railway
Gornergratbahn
Switzerland · 38.8 km from Sion46.024° N 7.750° E
Kabelleger / David Gubler ( http://www.bahnbilder.ch ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Gornergrat Railway climbs from the resort village of Zermatt, at about 1,604 metres, to a station at 3,089 metres on the Gornergrat ridge, facing one of the grandest mountain panoramas in the Alps.
Did you know? Year-round service came in two steps: to the lower section in 1929, and all the way to the summit in 1941.
05 Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway
Dampfbahn Furka-Bergstrecke
Switzerland · 38.6 km from Sarnen46.561° N 8.362° E
Arthur Meyer · CC BY-SA 3.0 For more than half a century the trains of the Furka line climbed over the Alps instead of under them, and today steam engines do so again. The Furka mountain section runs about 18 km from Realp in the canton of Uri, over the watershed and down to Gletsch and Oberwald in the upper Rhône valley in Valais.
Did you know? The mountain section was electrified in 1942, so the steam trains running today restore a sight unseen for decades.
06 Gornergrat
Switzerland45.983° N 7.785° E
Image by klausdie from Pixabay Gornergrat is a rocky ridge above Zermatt, and from its crest at 3,135 metres it offers one of the great high-mountain panoramas of the Alps.
Did you know? For its first decades the railway ran only in summer; year-round service reached the summit in 1941.
07 Sphinx Observatory
Sphinx-Observatorium
Switzerland46.548° N 7.985° E
Eric Hill from Boston, MA, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 The Sphinx Observatory sits on a rocky spur of the Jungfraujoch, the saddle between the Jungfrau and the Mönch, at 3,571 metres above sea level — one of the highest working observatories in the world and, from a distance, a strangely modest silhouette: a squat block with a silver dome perched on a crag of snow and…
Did you know? The astronomical dome was added only in 1950, more than a decade after the observatory itself opened.
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 places in Valais?
- On our list, Aletsch Glacier ranks first, followed by Matterhorn and Weisshorn.
- What is the largest glacier in the Alps?
- The Great Aletsch Glacier in Valais. It is about 20 kilometres long and is protected within the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch World Heritage Site.
- When was the Matterhorn first climbed?
- On 14 July 1865 by a party led by Edward Whymper. Four of the seven climbers died in a fall during the descent.
- When did the Gornergrat Railway open?
- In 1898. It was one of the first electrified rack railways in Switzerland and climbs from Zermatt to the Gornergrat ridge facing Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Valais?
- In our collection, the places in Valais are most often summits (1), mountains (1), glaciers (1) and rack railways (1).
- How many places are on this list in Valais?
- The list covers 7 places.