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Itinerary: Fairy- Tale Castles
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It seems almost inevitable that Switzerland, being the home of chocolate confectionery and picture-postcard countryside, should also have its fair share of sugary-sweet, Disney-style castles. It doesn’t disappoint. However enchanting (or enchanted) they may seem today, castles were often built for less romantic reasons than one might daydream about today. Used as fortresses and prisons as well as sumptuous residences, they all have plenty of intriguing history.
The best known of them all, immortalised by Lord Byron and many others, is the Château de Chillon, which juts out over Lake Geneva just outside Montreux. Not far to the north is the Château de Gruyères, in the eponymous high-hill cheese-making town.
To the west, on or near the mirror-like waters of Lac de Neuchâtel, are the witch’s hat turrets of the Château de Grandson, just outside Yverdon-les-Bains, and Château de Vaumarcus, south of Neuchâtel. You can sleep over in the latter.
More lakeside castles stand proudly in Thun, notably Schloss Thun and Schloss Schadau, and the altogether different, Italian-built, Escher-like Castello Visconteo at Locarno.
Away from the water, the most impressive castle scene you are likely to stumble across is the trio of Castelgrande, Castello Montebello and Castello di Sasso Corbaro at Bellinzona. Deep in the Engadine valley is Schloss Tarasp, a few kilometres outside Scuol.
A curious cylindrical defensive castle in the north of the country is the Munot in Schaffhausen.
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