The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Switzerland
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful water wonders in Switzerland are Rhine Falls, Oeschinen Lake and Staubbach Falls. The list covers 5 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Switzerland is a water tower for Europe. Its Alpine glaciers and snowfields feed the Rhine and the Rhône, and the valleys carved by Ice Age glaciers left vertical walls where streams fall hundreds of metres, as well as basins now filled by clear lakes. Few countries have so many waterfalls and mountain lakes in such a small space.
The Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen are the largest plain waterfall in Europe, the whole river dropping over a broad rock step. Oeschinen Lake above Kandersteg is a turquoise lake beneath a ring of cliffs in the Bernese Oberland. Staubbach Falls in Lauterbrunnen drops nearly 300 metres from an overhanging cliff, much of its water turning to spray before it reaches the valley, and inspired a poem by Goethe. The Verzasca in Ticino runs in a clear green river between granite boulders, crossed at Lavertezzo by a double-arched stone bridge. The Trümmelbach Falls are a series of glacier waterfalls inside the mountain, carrying meltwater from the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rhine Falls | Waterfall | |
| 2 | Oeschinen Lake | Lake | |
| 3 | Staubbach Falls | Waterfall | |
| 4 | Verzasca | River | |
| 5 | Trümmelbach Falls | Waterfall |
01 Rhine Falls
Rheinfall
Switzerland · 3.4 km from Schaffhausen47.677° N 8.616° E
Image by adege from Pixabay Two castles frame the scene. On the Zurich bank, Schloss Laufen sits right above the falls, with viewing platforms beside the falling water reached by steep stairways; on the Schaffhausen side the small Schlössli Wörth stands at the edge of the basin. Boats cross the pool below and take visitors out to the central rock.
Did you know? Fireworks first lit up the falls in 1857, and a large fireworks display around Swiss National Day has been held every year since 1966.
02 Oeschinen Lake
Oeschinensee
Switzerland46.498° N 7.727° E
Günter Seggebäing, Coesfeld · CC BY-SA 3.0 The lake owes its existence to a catastrophe. In prehistoric times a huge rock avalanche, most likely from the northern flank of the Doldenhorn, or possibly an earlier one from the Fisistock, came down across the valley and dammed it. The basin behind filled to cover a little over a square kilometre, with depths of up to 56 metres. There is no visible outlet: the water drains away underground through the rubble of the old landslide.
Did you know? Before a small dam was built at the outlet, the lake periodically overflowed, and a flood from it in 1846 may have been set off by an unseen rockfall.
03 Staubbach Falls
Staubbachfall
Switzerland46.590° N 7.906° E
Adrian Michael · CC BY-SA 3.0 That fame is 18th-century, not modern. Goethe visited in 1779, was struck by the sight of water disintegrating down a sheer 300-metre wall, and wrote a poem about it — "Gesang der Geister über den Wassern" ("Song of the Spirits over the Waters") — directly inspired by what he saw.
Did you know? Rising warm air currents along the cliff regularly scatter the water in every direction, which is what turns the stream into its famous dust.
04 Verzasca
Switzerland · 30.3 km from Bellinzona46.391° N 8.743° E
Image by kasabubu from Pixabay What to look at here is the stone. Along the middle valley the river has smoothed the bedrock into rounded slabs, bowls and sinuous channels, the kind of sculpted riverbed that looks almost poured rather than eroded. At Lavertezzo it passes under the Ponte dei Salti, a double-arched stone bridge built in the 17th century, damaged by floods in 1868 and rebuilt in 1960.
Did you know? Despite its gentle summer look, the Verzasca's flow is highly irregular, and in flood it can surge to around 1,000 cubic metres per second.
05 Trümmelbach Falls
Trümmelbachfälle
Switzerland46.569° N 7.915° E
JoachimKohler-HB · CC BY-SA 4.0 The water is meltwater from the glaciers on the flanks of the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau. The catchment covers about 24 km², roughly half of it under snow and ice, and at the peak of the melt in late spring and early summer the stream carries up to 20,000 litres per second, together with large quantities of rock debris ground off by the glaciers.
Did you know? The falls lie within the Jungfrau-Aletsch World Heritage area.
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 water wonders in Switzerland?
- On our list, Rhine Falls ranks first, followed by Oeschinen Lake and Staubbach Falls.
- How old are the Rhine Falls?
- The Rhine Falls formed around 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, when the river was pushed into a new bed and began to fall over a hard limestone step.
- Why is the Verzasca river so clear?
- It flows over granite and gneiss that release little sediment, so the water stays transparent and takes a deep green colour in the pools.
- Which Goethe poem was inspired by Staubbach Falls?
- Goethe wrote Song of the Spirits over the Waters after visiting the Staubbach Falls in Lauterbrunnen in 1779.
- How many lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches are on this list in Switzerland?
- The list covers 5 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches.