Lauterbrunnen Valley

The Lauterbrunnen valley is a deeply cut trough valley with almost vertical rock walls, over which around 72 waterfalls plunge. The best known is the Staubbach Falls, which drops nearly 300 m freely into the depths. The valley is considered one of the most beautiful in the Alps and inspired Goethe; the car-free mountain villages of Wengen and Mürren lie high above the valley floor.

Highlights

• Staubbach Falls, nearly 300 m free fall
• Trümmelbach Falls, glacier waterfalls accessible inside the mountain
• Car-free high villages Wengen and Mürren
• View of the Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger from the valley floor

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The Lauterbrunnen Valley in the Bernese Oberland is regarded as the valley of seventy-two waterfalls, and hardly any other place in the Alps embodies the image of the classic glacial trough valley as vividly as this U-shaped valley framed by sheer rock walls. Ice-age glaciers ground its flanks steep and smooth, so that today the side streams plunge in free fall over the edges, above all the Staubbach Falls, whose fine, wind-scattered veil is said to have inspired Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to his poem “Song of the Spirits over the Waters”.

Hidden within the mountain, the Trümmelbach Falls roar, a series of glacial waterfalls that have hollowed out the interior of the rock and carry away the meltwater of the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau, a chain of raging cascades made accessible inside the mountain. The grandeur of this landscape has inscribed itself deeply into culture: the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien travelled through the valley in his youth, and connoisseurs see in the Lauterbrunnen Valley the model for the fabled Rivendell of his tales. High above the valley floor, the car-free villages of Mürren and Wengen cling to the slopes, from which the view opens onto the famous north face of the Eiger. The valley is thus shaped in equal measure by rock, water and myth.