Sils Maria – Nietzsche's summer village between two Engadin lakes

A bus ride from St. Moritz, but a world apart: Sils Maria is where Friedrich Nietzsche spent seven summers, where a family-run grand hotel has stood since 1908 and where the Val Fex is closed to cars and served by a horse-drawn omnibus.

Sils Maria – Segl Maria in Romansh – lies in the Upper Engadine between Lake Sils and Lake Silvaplana, at the foot of Piz Corvatsch and below the Val Fex. With its twin village of Sils Baselgia it forms a municipality of around 700 people. It sits a kilometre off the main road over the Julier and Maloja passes, and buses link it to St. Moritz and Chiavenna. For more of the Engadin, see our Alps destinations.

Nietzsche's summers

Friedrich Nietzsche first came in 1881 and returned every summer until 1888, except 1882: seven summers in all, during which he wrote some of his most important work and spread the fame of the lake around the world. He lodged in the plainest of conditions in a house in the village, which has been a museum and research centre, the Nietzsche-Haus, since 1960. He also wrote a poem named after the place, Sils-Maria. Next door, the Hotel Edelweiss was built in 1876; its Art Nouveau hall is listed.

He was not the only writer drawn here. Hermann Hesse liked to stay, and the Swiss writer and photographer Annemarie Schwarzenbach rented a house in Sils Baselgia from 1934 until her death in 1942. The conductor Claudio Abbado is buried in the cemetery at Fex-Crasta.

The Waldhaus

The Hotel Waldhaus was built in 1906–08 by the architect Karl Koller and opened in 1908. It is one of the few five-star hotels in Switzerland to have stayed with the same family since it opened, and inside and out it remains largely as it was built. Over the decades its guests have included numerous artists, musicians, writers and philosophers.

Into the Val Fex

The Val Fex is closed to private cars and served by a licensed horse-drawn omnibus, and in summer the valley and the lake plain are used for easy walks, in winter for cross-country skiing. For three centuries the head of the valley was quarried for mica-schist slabs, the Fexerplatten, used for stoves and roofs; the workings fell into disuse after 1964.

The lake and the Chastè

Lake Sils was the village's living for centuries: from the late Middle Ages, salted and smoked trout were exported to Italy, which is why a trout sits on the municipal coat of arms. On the Chastè peninsula in the lake are the remains of a medieval castle. In winter, when the lakes freeze, the Engadin Skimarathon crosses them. The village's own mountain, the Furtschellas, has had an aerial tramway since 1972, which made Sils a winter resort as well as a summer one.

For more travel reading, browse Metro Mode Travel and our destination guides; for the French Alps, VERA PI follows the property market from Évian to Chamonix.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.