At more than 1,800 metres, the upper Inn valley strings its lakes together like beads: Sils, Silvaplana, St. Moritz. In winter they freeze so deep that people walk on them, ski across them and even race horses on them.
IWhere winter tourism was born
The story goes that in 1864 the hotelier Johannes Badrutt made a wager with some English guests: if they came back in winter and did not enjoy their stay, he would refund their journey. They stayed until Easter. Alpine winter tourism had been born.
St. Moritz later hosted the Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948. Since 1907, horse races have been held on the frozen lake at the White Turf, and every March thousands of cross-country skiers cross the lakes during the Engadin Skimarathon.
IIHouses you can read
In the villages of the Lower Engadine, such as Guarda or Ardez, thick-walled houses wear sgraffito: patterns scratched into the plaster to reveal a darker layer beneath. Rosettes, friezes, scrolls: another way of laying down ornament, patient and geometric, very close to the spirit of mosaic.
Romansh, one of Switzerland's four national languages, is still spoken here. Inscriptions in Rumantsch on the façades record who built each house and in which year.
IIIThe light of Sils
Friedrich Nietzsche spent several summers in Sils Maria and said he had found a light there like no other. Painters sought it too: a silvery, almost mineral clarity that makes the ridges shine and turns the lakes into mirrors.
Our Lac gelé square was born of that hour: dusk over a grand hotel with lit windows, the village at the edge of the ice, the peaks reflected in it.
Next journalThe Amalfi Coast, step by step