SwitzerlandSchweiz / Suisse / Svizzera

The Swiss story begins in 1291, when the valley communities of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden around Lake Lucerne swore mutual defence against outside lords, according to the Federal Charter. The legend of William Tell, who shot an apple from his son's head, belongs to the same founding myth. Other towns and valleys joined over the next two centuries — Lucerne, Zurich, Bern — and the confederates won famous battles against Habsburg and Burgundian armies.

Expansion ended with defeat by France at Marignano in 1515, and neutrality became practice long before it became law. The Reformation split the confederation: Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva turned their cities Protestant, while the central mountain cantons stayed Catholic. Religious wars between cantons flared until the 19th century, which is why many towns still have a clear confessional identity.

Napoleon's armies invaded in 1798 and imposed a centralised Helvetic Republic, which failed. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 recognised Swiss neutrality and added Geneva, Valais and Neuchâtel. After a brief civil war in 1847, the modern federal constitution of 1848 created a single state with Bern as the federal city, a common currency, and a parliament modelled partly on the United States.

No country uses direct democracy as heavily as Switzerland. Citizens can force a national referendum on any new law with 50,000 signatures and propose constitutional amendments with 100,000. Votes happen four times a year on several questions at once, from pension reform to the protection of cows' horns. In two cantons, Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, citizens still vote by show of hands in an open-air assembly, the Landsgemeinde.

The federal government is a seven-member council drawn from the main parties, with a presidency that rotates yearly. Most power sits with the cantons and communes, which set taxes, schools and police. The result is slow, consensus-driven and stable. It was also slow on some issues: women only received the federal vote in 1971.

Neutrality shaped the 20th century. Switzerland stayed out of both world wars, though its trade with Nazi Germany, its refusal of many Jewish refugees and the handling of dormant bank accounts were examined critically in the 1990s. Geneva became the seat of the Red Cross, the League of Nations and today many UN agencies. Switzerland is not in the EU or NATO but is tied to the EU by more than a hundred bilateral agreements, including Schengen and free movement of people.

Switzerland has four national languages. German-speakers, about 62%, speak Swiss German dialects that differ strongly by valley and are rarely written; they read and write standard German. French is spoken in the west (the Romandie), Italian in Ticino and parts of Graubünden, and Romansh, a Latin language, by a small minority in Graubünden. The line between German and French areas is nicknamed the Röstigraben, the 'rösti ditch'.

The divide is cultural as well as linguistic: the Romandie tends to vote more pro-European and state-friendly, the German-speaking countryside more conservative. Ticino looks south to Milan. People commonly learn a second national language at school, and English increasingly serves as a neutral common language between regions.

For travellers, the practical effect is that place names, menus and greetings change as you cross an invisible line: Biel becomes Bienne, Grüezi becomes Bonjour, and rösti gives way to fondue and then polenta. Swiss institutions print everything in three or four languages, which makes signage easy to follow even when you speak none of them.

Swiss travel is built on a rail system of unusual density and punctuality. The first Gotthard tunnel opened in 1882 and made the country a north–south transit route; the Gotthard Base Tunnel, 57 km long, opened in 2016 as the world's longest rail tunnel. Swiss voters have repeatedly approved spending on rail, and the timetable is designed around a 'clock-face' principle in which trains meet at hub stations on the hour and half hour.

Mountain railways began as tourist attractions in the 19th century, when British climbers and Victorian travellers made the Alps fashionable. The Rigi railway (1871) was the first mountain rack railway in Europe; the Jungfrau railway, completed in 1912, tunnels through the Eiger to the highest station in Europe at 3,454 m. The Glacier Express and Bernina Express run on narrow-gauge lines whose viaducts and spirals are UNESCO heritage.

Tourism came with Alpinism. The first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 ended with four of the seven climbers killed, and made Zermatt famous. Today about 65,000 km of hiking trails are signposted in yellow with walking times, and mountain huts run by the Swiss Alpine Club make multi-day routes possible. Glaciers are retreating fast; Swiss glaciers lost around 10% of their volume in 2022–2023 alone, and villages like Blatten in Valais have been destroyed by glacier-related collapses.

Swiss food began as preservation: hard cheeses like Gruyère and Emmentaler kept through winter and could be traded, and fondue and raclette used up hard cheese and old bread. Alpine dairying is still subsidised and celebrated, and many show dairies let visitors watch cheese being made. Much of the national diet is simple and dairy-based, with French, Italian and German influences by region.

Chocolate became Swiss in the 19th century through technical innovations: Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate in 1875 using Henri Nestlé's condensed milk, and Rodolphe Lindt developed conching, which gave chocolate its smooth texture, in 1879. The Swiss eat around 10 kg of chocolate per person a year, among the highest rates in the world.

Watchmaking arrived with Huguenot refugees in Geneva in the 16th century, when Calvin's bans on jewellery pushed goldsmiths towards watches. It spread to the Jura mountains, where farmers made parts in winter. After nearly collapsing in the 1970s against Japanese quartz watches, the industry recovered with the Swatch and a focus on luxury, and the Jura towns of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle are UNESCO sites for their watchmaking town planning.

Switzerland is among the world's richest countries, with high wages matched by high prices. The economy rests on pharmaceuticals (Roche, Novartis), finance, insurance, precision engineering, food (Nestlé) and commodity trading. The collapse of Credit Suisse in 2023 and its takeover by UBS dented the banking sector's reputation for stability.

A quarter of residents are foreign citizens, and immigration is the most contested issue, driven by the Swiss People's Party, the largest party. Relations with the EU are the other long-running question: after years of negotiation, a new package of treaties with Brussels was agreed in principle and faces referendums — check the latest before assuming anything about future rules for EU citizens.

For visitors, the country is famously efficient, clean and safe, and famously expensive. Understanding a few habits helps: punctuality is literal, recycling is strict, Sunday is quiet, and cash has largely given way to cards and the TWINT app. The mountains, not the cities, are why most people come, and climate change is visibly altering them within a single visit's memory.