Grünten

The Grünten is regarded as the guardian of the Allgäu, because as a striking foothill it rises visible from afar over the Iller valley. From the summit at 1,738 m the view reaches over the Allgäu foothills and the high-Alpine chain. Trails and a cable car open up the popular viewpoint mountain.

Highlights

• Striking viewpoint mountain above the Iller valley
• View over the Allgäu Alps
• Trails and cable car
• Epithet the guardian of the Allgäu

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The Grünten is a striking, free-standing mountain massif on the northern edge of the Allgäu Alps, which, because of its forward position and its powerful form, has always been called the Guardian of the Allgäu. Because it lies in front of the pre-Alps, its summit offers an unusually wide view: to the north the eye roams over the hilly alpine foreland with its lakes and moors, to the south the whole chain of the Allgäu high peaks is staggered upwards. This intermediary position between lowland and high mountains gives the mountain its special charm.

Within the Grünten iron ore was mined for a long time, and mining shaped the life of the surrounding villages just as much as the alpine farming that later emerged, whose pastures still structure the slopes today. The Allgäu mountain world was long considered rougher and more original than the better-known areas further east, a land of dairy alpine pastures and hard peasant labour. In clear weather the view from the summit reaches far out to Lake Constance and on good days even to the Swiss mountains, while in the south the glaciated peaks of the Allgäu High Alps tower up. From the summit of the Grünten, crowned by a memorial visible from afar, this dual nature can be surveyed: the gentle foreland shaped by human hand and the wild world of the high mountains, marked by wind and weather, which has always stretched the Allgäu between gentleness and severity.