St. Moritz

St. Moritz occupies a singular position among Alpine resorts, situated at an elevation of approximately eighteen hundred metres on the southern slopes of the Albula Alps in Switzerland’s Upper Engadine. As the principal town of the Maloja administrative region in the canton of the Grisons, it presides over the wide glaciated valley of the Upper Engadine and the eponymous lake at its heart. With a permanent population of some five thousand six hundred and a seasonal workforce of three thousand, the town accommodates thirteen thousand beds across its luxury hotels and rental units, while its year-round inhabitants include nearly forty per cent foreign nationals. St. Moritz has cultivated an international reputation through its pioneering winter-sports heritage—hosting the Winter Olympic Games twice, in 1928 and again in 1948—and through its continued stewardship of world-class facilities for skiing, bobsleigh, skeleton, polo, sailing and summer athletic training.

The geography of St. Moritz is defined by contrasts. Beneath Piz Nair—rising to three thousand fifty-six metres—the town overlooks the broad, icy expanse of Lake St. Moritz, which itself rests upon a valley floor sculpted by ancient glaciers. Spanning nearly twenty-nine square kilometres, the municipal territory comprises agricultural meadows and alpine pastures that cover a little over one quarter of its surface area, while forests cloak one fifth. The built environment—roads, hotels and private residences—accounts for less than one tenth of the land, leaving almost half as high-alpine terrain deemed unproductive. Since the mid-1980s, the footprint of permanent structures has increased modestly by some twenty-three hectares, even as cultivated fields receded by thirty-seven hectares and woodlands expanded by thirty-three hectares. Rivers and lakes—static and flowing waters alike—occupy nearly a hundred hectares, while dedicated recreational spaces now represent more than one per cent of the total area.

Human settlement in St. Moritz comprises several distinct quarters—St. Moritz-Dorf and St. Moritz-Bad, perched at eighteen hundred and seventeen hundred seventy-five metres respectively; the hamlet of Champfèr, and the Suvretta village section—each linked by roads and the funicular to the Corviglia summit and ski arena. The railway station, the highest in Switzerland, marks the terminus of the Rhaetian Railway’s Albula and Bernina lines; it thrives as a nexus for the Glacier Express and Bernina Express trains, while PostBus services radiate to Chur and Lugano. A modest airport five kilometres distant at Samedan provides connections to major European hubs, yet the preferred routes for most visitors remain the scenic railways that traverse the iconic passes of Julier, Bernina and Maloja.

St. Moritz’s ascent as a winter-sports destination began in the nineteenth century, when British students from Oxford and Cambridge staged an early form of the ice-hockey varsity match on frozen waters in 1885. The town’s natural combination of elevation, reliable snow cover and abundant sunshine—exceeding three hundred days per annum—propelled it to global prominence. It became one of only three cities to host the Winter Olympic Games on two occasions, joined by Innsbruck and Lake Placid, and further welcomed the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in four separate years: 1934, 1974, 2003 and 2017. The FIBT World Championships for bobsleigh and skeleton have convened here a record twenty-one times, reinforcing the tradition that in nineteen hundred four saw the inauguration of what remains the world’s last natural-ice bob run. Constructed anew each winter from snow and water, this 1.72-kilometre ice channel—often described as the largest “ice sculpture” on Earth—once ferried racing sleds alone, but by the early 1930s began offering taxi-style rides to guests, a practice that endures with only minor modifications to modern racing bobs.

Over the decades St. Moritz has broadened its sporting repertoire. Snow Polo St. Moritz has attracted the finest world teams since 1985, staging matches on a field meticulously marked upon the frozen lake. Sailors contest the annual Match Race on Lake St. Moritz using identical BLU-26 dinghies, two-boat face-offs that test tactical acumen and physical endurance; each event contributes points toward the World Match Racing Tour and the coveted ISAF title. Summer, too, finds St. Moritz imbued with athletic rigor: runners, cyclists and race walkers exploit the high altitude and temperate daylight conditions to strengthen endurance, utilising the town’s world-class athletics track and the extensive network of paths and trails. Windsurfers and kite-sailors favour nearby Silvaplana, where predictable thermal winds on the lake’s southwest shore sustain a premier watersports centre.

Cultural institutions in St. Moritz reflect its dual identity as both Alpine haven and cosmopolitan enclave. The Segantini Museum—housed since 1908 in a structure by Nicolaus Hartmann—preserves the works of Giovanni Segantini, who spent his final years in the Engadine, while the Berry Museum, located in the historic Villa Arona, displays four decades of oil paintings, pastels and drawings by the painter and spa physician Peter Robert Berry. Literary pilgrims may visit the Nietzsche Stone, a site linked to Friedrich Nietzsche’s sojourns in the region, and enthusiasts of transport heritage can pause at the Trambänkli, a vestige of one of Switzerland’s earliest electric tram stations repurposed as a bus stop. Contemporary architecture is represented by Lord Norman Foster’s Chesa Futura, whose larch-clapboard façade conceals ten private apartments overlooking the lake. In contrast, Chesa Veglia—dating from the seventeenth century—has been adaptively reused to house dining venues, including a French grill and two convivial bars, while the twelfth-century Leaning Tower opposite the Kulm Hotel stands as an enduring emblem of the town’s medieval roots.

Seasonal festivals reinforce St. Moritz’s reputation for elegant recreation. Each winter the frozen lake hosts the White Turf horse races, an event that draws aristocratic spectators to witness thoroughbreds galloping across ice. Opera performances grace the town throughout the year; the British Classic Car Meeting assembles automotive aficionados; the Surf Marathon exploits local terrain in a novel athletic challenge; and the City Race and Gourmet Festival combine sportive displays with culinary artistry. Guests reliant upon the official Engadin event calendar may tailor visits to coincide with these gatherings, evidencing the municipality’s commitment to sustained cultural engagement beyond the winter season.

Within the town’s hospitality sphere, five establishments—collectively known as the “Big 5”—set the standard for luxury: Badrutt’s Palace, the Kempinski Grand Hotel des Bains, the Carlton Hotel, the Kulm Hotel and Suvretta House. These venerable institutions accommodate dignitaries and celebrities—among them the late members of European royalty, film stars, industrial magnates and prominent artists—affirming St. Moritz’s status as a haven for the international elite. Their grand façades and opulent interiors complement the town’s alpine character, while seasonal employees numbering some three thousand ensure that guests experience the highest service standards.

Summer and winter alike offer access to the natural environs. Skiers and snowboarders attend snowsports schools across four ski areas—Corviglia, Corvatsch, Diavolezza and Zuoz—alternating between prepared pistes that cumulatively extend three hundred fifty kilometres. Hikers can traverse nearly six hundred kilometres of trails, from the family-oriented Schellen-Ursli Weg to the red-rated ascents of Fuorcla Surlej and Diavolezza to Munt Pers, with cable-car access complimentary for visitors whose stays exceed two nights. Diavolezza’s summit station at three thousand three hundred metres shelters an ice cave, and its principal descent returns exhilarated guests via an eight-kilometre piste to St. Moritz-Bad. The Cresta Run, famed as the world’s only natural skeleton track, operates from late December until early March, inviting athletes and spectators to witness high-velocity tobogganing on frozen curves chiselled into the mountainside. Ice skating persists from mid-July through mid-April on an artificial rink, while curling and bespoke ice-rental events accommodate groups; remain the seasonal shifts of wind and light allow, outdoors pursuits transition seamlessly from snow to turf to water.

The regional climate underscores St. Moritz’s unique microcosm. Classified as subarctic, the town experiences cool summers with temperatures moderated by elevation and nights that dip sharply, while winters bring abundant snowfall—averaging two hundred fifty-four centimetres annually—and sustained periods of sub-zero diurnal highs. The average ambient temperature, recorded in the proximate town of Samedan, hovers near two degrees Celsius, rendering St. Moritz among the coldest inhabited locales in Switzerland and contrasting notably with the broader Swiss Plateau. Yet the exceptional clarity and intensity of sunlight at altitude reward outdoor endeavour, making the Engadine valley a destination for athletes and aesthetes alike.

In cultural consciousness and popular media, St. Moritz appears as both setting and symbol. Norman Foster’s Chesa Futura provided the backdrop for avant-garde architectural discourse; Alfred Hitchcock’s 1934 thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much opened within its environs; the town surfaces in James Bond narratives—Goldfinger and For Your Eyes Only—and in cinematic ski sequences attributed to it though filmed elsewhere. Literary references span Sidney Sheldon’s Memories of Midnight and Nora Roberts’s Public Secrets; pop culture nods include the Global Deejays’ club remix “Snow Radio” and Netflix’s Army of Thieves. Moreover, the town’s associations with personalities from Maurizio Gucci to Ingvar Kamprad reinforce its allure as a haven for those seeking retreat within dramatic mountain confines.

Thus, St. Moritz endures as a locus of Alpine prestige, where natural endowments—elevation, snow, sun—intertwine with human enterprise to yield a resort of multifaceted distinction. Its statistical contours—land-use balances, population dynamics, infrastructure extensions—attest to a measured evolution that preserves environment and heritage while accommodating the requirements of global sporting and cultural phenomena. Through winter’s crystalline chill and summer’s sunlit vistas, it stands as a testament to the possibilities inherent in high-altitude settlement, an exemplar of resort town refinement within Europe’s mountain realm.