Zermatt: A Gentle Guide to the Matterhorn's Village

Some mountains are beautiful. The Matterhorn is unforgettable. It stands alone above the valley head, a four-sided pyramid of rock that rises to 4,478 metres, and it looks almost drawn by hand — too perfect to be real. Below it, at around 1,600 metres, lies Zermatt: a village of dark timber barns, church bells and small electric taxis, in the German-speaking corner of the canton of Valais.

What makes Zermatt so kind to older travellers is something it did long ago, almost by accident. Petrol cars are not allowed in. You arrive by train, you walk out of the station, and the mountain is simply there at the end of the street. There is no traffic to cross, no parking to find, and no need to drive on hairpin bends to reach a viewpoint.

And the viewpoints come to you. A cog railway climbs to 3,089 metres in little over half an hour. A cable car lifts you to 3,883 metres, the highest station of its kind in Europe. A funicular carries you up to a lake that reflects the Matterhorn after a ten-minute stroll. This is one of the great Alpine landscapes, and you can see most of it sitting down.

A little history

For most of its life Zermatt was a poor farming hamlet, its name taken from zur Matte — "at the meadow". The granaries you still see on stone discs in the old quarter, built to keep mice out of the grain, belong to that older world.

Everything changed with the mountain. On 14 July 1865, after years of failed attempts, a party led by the Englishman Edward Whymper reached the Matterhorn's summit. On the way down a rope broke and four of the seven men fell to their deaths. The triumph and the tragedy made Zermatt famous overnight, and the village has lived with climbers and walkers ever since.

The railway from Visp up the valley opened in 1890–91, and from then on the mountain belonged to visitors as well as guides. The broken rope from that first ascent is still kept in the village museum — a small, quiet object that explains a great deal about the place.

The entrance to the Matterhorn Museum in the centre of Zermatt.

What to see

Gornergrat

If you do only one thing in Zermatt, do this. The Gornergrat cog railway leaves from a station directly across the street from the main railway station and climbs to a ridge at 3,089 metres in roughly half an hour, through larch woods and open pastures and finally bare rock. It is the highest open-air railway in Europe, and the views do not wait for the top: the Matterhorn appears again and again on the right-hand side.

At the summit station you step out onto broad terraces facing a half-circle of glaciers and 4,000-metre peaks, with the great Gorner glacier sprawling below. A hotel and restaurant sit at the top, so there is shelter, warmth and a toilet before you ride back down.

Matterhorn Glacier Paradise

From the other side of the village, a chain of cable cars rises by way of Furi and Trockener Steg to the Klein Matterhorn at 3,883 metres — the highest point in Europe reachable by cable car, in about forty minutes of travel. The air up there is genuinely thin. Lifts inside the mountain take you to a viewing platform looking out over dozens of high summits and glaciers, and a tunnel leads into an ice palace carved inside the glacier. Snow lies here all year.

Sunnegga and the mountain lakes

The gentlest of the three big excursions. An underground funicular, entered near the river at the edge of the village, climbs to Sunnegga at just over 2,200 metres in a few minutes. From the top station it is about ten minutes on an easy path to Leisee, a small lake with benches, a restaurant and the Matterhorn standing in the water on a calm morning. A gondola continues higher to Blauherd for a wider panorama.

The village and the Matterhorn Museum

Zermatt itself deserves an unhurried afternoon. Walk down Bahnhofstrasse with the mountain framed at the end of it, cross the Vispa on the church bridge for the classic view of water, rooftops and summit, and visit the Matterhorn Museum – Zermatlantis in the central square, built partly underground as a reconstructed old village. Behind the church lies the mountaineers' cemetery, which is moving rather than gloomy.

The Matterhorn seen from the Gornergrat railway above Zermatt.

The easiest walks, and where to turn back

Zermatt's secret is that the best walking is at the top of the lifts, not above the village. You ride up, walk a little on level ground, and ride down again.

• Rotenboden to the Riffelsee — get off the Gornergrat train one stop below the summit and follow a gently descending path for ten to fifteen minutes to a small lake at about 2,757 metres. This is the famous reflection of the Matterhorn. Return the same way to the station: it is a short climb back, taken slowly.
• Sunnegga to Leisee — around ten minutes each way on a broad, easy path, with a short slope down to the water. There is also a small inclined lift between station and lake, which saves the legs.
• Riffelberg terraces — a middle station on the Gornergrat line with almost flat paths, a restaurant and an enormous view, and no need to go higher if the altitude feels like enough.
• The riverside paths in the village — the Vispa walk is level, shaded and pleasant in the late afternoon.
• The Five Lakes Trail — often recommended, and genuinely lovely, but it runs around ten kilometres with real ups and downs and takes about three hours. Treat it as ambitious rather than easy, or walk only its first lake and come back.

The Matterhorn reflected in Grindjisee, one of the small lakes above Zermatt.

The most comfortable ways to see the mountains

Nothing here requires you to be fit — only to plan. Three mountain railways and lift systems leave from the village itself, each giving a different face of the same peak: Gornergrat for glaciers, the Klein Matterhorn for altitude, Sunnegga for lakes and meadows. All of them have seats, all of them have a restaurant at the top, and all of them can be done as a half-day with a long lunch.

A few comforts worth knowing. On the Gornergrat train the Matterhorn is on the right going up, so sit on that side and change sides for the descent. The cog railway runs in summer and in winter, so a December visit still gives you the high panorama with snow on it. The Glacier Express, the famous slow panoramic train across Switzerland, begins and ends in Zermatt, and you can ride a short stretch of the route down the valley without committing to the whole eight-hour journey.

In the village, small electric taxis and hotel buggies cover the distances between station and hotel — ask your hotel to send one, as most do.

The aerial tramway from Trockener Steg up to the Klein Matterhorn at 3,883 m.

A day trip nearby

Zermatt sits at the end of a long dead-end valley, so the nearest day trip is the valley itself — and it is a beautiful one.

Take the Matterhorn Gotthard Railway down from Zermatt towards Brig, a ride of roughly an hour and a half through a gorge of rock walls, torrents, small villages of black timber and vineyards that appear as the air warms. Brig is a flat, easy town with a broad square and the courtyards of the Stockalper Palace, a 17th-century merchant's residence. You can be back in Zermatt for dinner.

If you would rather not leave the valley at all, ride only as far as Täsch or Randa, look up at the walls of the Mattertal, and come back on the next train. The timetable is frequent and the carriages are warm.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• Altitude is the real issue here, not the walking. Zermatt is already at about 1,600 metres; the Klein Matterhorn is at 3,883 metres, where the air holds far less oxygen. Many visitors feel light-headed or breathless. Move slowly, stay twenty to thirty minutes at the very top rather than an hour, and go down if you feel unwell.
• If you have a heart or lung condition, ask your doctor before planning the highest cable car. Gornergrat, at around 3,100 metres, is a gentler alternative with views that are just as grand.
• Spend your first day low. Do the village and the museum first, Sunnegga on day two, the high peaks afterwards. It makes a genuine difference.
• Dress for winter even in July. It can be near freezing on the glacier terraces while the village is warm. Take a windproof jacket, gloves, a hat and sunglasses; the sun at altitude is fierce and sunscreen matters.
• Choose a hotel in the lower village, near the station or the church. Zermatt is built on a slope and some streets climb steeply. Ask for a room "near Bahnhofstrasse" or on a level street, and confirm there is a lift in the building.
• Have your luggage met. Hotels send electric vehicles or buggies to the station; arrange it when you book so you are not pulling cases uphill.
• Plan around the weather, not the calendar. The Matterhorn is often wrapped in cloud by midday. Go up early, and keep one spare morning in your stay for the mountain to show itself.
• Travel passes are worth checking. Swiss rail passes and regional cards give reductions on the mountain railways; ask at the station before buying each ride separately.

What to eat

Valais cooking is mountain food: cheese, cured meat, bread and wine, served in warm wooden rooms.

Raclette comes from this canton, and in the better places it is still scraped from a half-wheel of cheese melted beside the fire, served with potatoes, pickled onions and gherkins. Fondue needs no introduction, though it is a heavy evening meal — easier shared than attempted alone.

Look for a Walliser Teller, a cold plate of local specialities built around Trockenfleisch, air-dried beef cured with salt and herbs in the dry valley air for weeks; it is thinly sliced, dark and intensely savoury. Cholera is the dish with the alarming name — a Valais pie of pastry filled with potato, leek, onion, cheese and sometimes apple or pear, dating from a 19th-century epidemic when people cooked with whatever was in the house. It is comfort food, and ideal after a cold morning on the glacier.

To drink, the Valais is Switzerland's largest wine region: ask for a glass of Fendant, the dry local white made from Chasselas, or a red Dôle. Apricots are the canton's great fruit, and Abricotine, a clear apricot brandy, often arrives at the end of a meal. Most mountain-station restaurants also do a good soup, a rösti and a slice of cake — which, with a view like that, is lunch enough.

The Matterhorn above the Vispa, seen from the church bridge in Zermatt.

Getting there

Zermatt is car-free. Private vehicles stop at Täsch, about five kilometres down the valley, where a large covered terminal car park connects to a shuttle train that reaches the village in roughly twelve minutes, with departures about every twenty minutes through the day. It sounds inconvenient; in practice it is the easiest arrival in the Alps.

Within the village, everything central is walkable on the flat along Bahnhofstrasse, and small electric taxis cover the rest.

The Matterhorn at the end of Bahnhofstrasse, the main street leading from Zermatt's railway station.

Our verdict

Zermatt is one of the few truly great landscapes in Europe that asks almost nothing of your legs. The mountain is in sight from the main street; the railways and cable cars do the climbing; the paths that matter are short, level and at the top. For travellers over 60 who want the Alps at their most dramatic without long ascents or mountain driving, there is nothing quite like it.

Go with time to spare, keep your expectations loose about the weather, and respect the altitude. Then sit on a terrace at three thousand metres with a bowl of soup, and watch that impossible pyramid of rock change colour as the afternoon goes on. It is worth the journey, and the waiting.

“You do not go looking for the Matterhorn in Zermatt — you look up, and it is already watching you.”

Photo credits

• Matterhorn, Zermatt, Switzerland Unsplash: Joshua Earle joshuaearle, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Matterhorn museum: Iter1, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
• 3802 - Zermatt - Matterhorn viewed from Gornergratbahn: Andrew Bossi, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
• CH.VS.Zermatt Sunnegga Grindjisee Matterhorn 9034 16x9-R 16K: NOTE: This image is a panorama consisting of multiple frames that were merged or, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• CH.VS.Zermatt 2019-12-27 Klein-Matterhorn 6918 16x9-R 5K: Roy Egloff, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• 4027 - Zermatt - Matterhorn from Kirchebrücke: Andrew Bossi, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
• 4022 - Zermatt - Matterhorn from Bahnhofstrasse: Andrew Bossi, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons