Davos

At around 1,560 m, Davos is the highest town in Europe and a tradition-rich health and winter-sports resort. The Parsenn and Jakobshorn ski areas, a long reputation as a high-altitude climatic resort and the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) shape the town. In summer, wide high-altitude hikes beckon.

Highlights

• Highest town in Europe (around 1,560 m)
• Parsenn and Jakobshorn ski areas
• Tradition-rich high-altitude resort
• Host of the WEF

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Practical info

Background & History

Davos lies in a wide high valley of Graubünden and, at around 1,560 metres, is among the highest-lying towns of the Alps. The place owes its reputation to a promise of health: the dry, clear mountain air was regarded in the 19th century as a remedy against tuberculosis, and so numerous sanatoria arose here in which the sick from all over Europe sought recovery. This world of rest cures and high-altitude clinics shaped literature, most famously in Thomas Mann’s novel of the Magic Mountain. Arthur Conan Doyle, too, an ardent admirer of Switzerland, brought his consumptive wife to Davos and is among the pioneers of winter tourism.

It was this very Conan Doyle who here made the acquaintance of a then-new sport, Alpine skiing, which had previously been known in Scandinavia but hardly in the Swiss mountains. The spa resort thus became a cradle of winter mountain sport. In the 20th century a further significance was added: today the powerful of the world meet in Davos every year for their deliberations, so that the name has long stood for economics and politics too. Above the valley, however, what drew generations here remains, the healing expanse of a landscape in which the light appears especially pure.