Vaduz

Vaduz begins as a lordship on a river plain. The name is first recorded around 1150, and the medieval town belonged to the Counts of Werdenberg-Sargans and later of Vaduz, who built a fortress on the rock above the settlement. The castle first appears in written sources in 1322. The upper Rhine was a border zone where Swiss, Austrian and Swabian interests met, and the valley was fought over more than once. The Swabian War of 1499 left the castle damaged and the district poorer, and for the next two centuries the lordship passed between owners who mostly lived elsewhere.

The modern country exists because of a family looking for a seat in the Holy Roman Empire. The Liechtenstein family, wealthy Austrian nobles named after a castle near Vienna, owned large estates but no territory that was directly answerable to the Emperor, and without such land they could not sit in the Imperial Diet. They bought the Lordship of Schellenberg in 1699 and the County of Vaduz in 1712, both small and both available. In 1719 Emperor Charles VI united them as the Principality of Liechtenstein. For more than a century the princes hardly visited; the country was ruled from Vienna by officials.

The nineteenth century turned an estate into a state. When the Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806, Liechtenstein became a sovereign member of the Confederation of the Rhine, and later of the German Confederation. When that confederation dissolved in 1866, Liechtenstein was fully independent, and in 1868 the prince abolished the tiny army, which had been a handful of soldiers. There has been no army since. A constitution followed in 1862 and a new one in 1921, which set up the mix of monarchy and democracy that still applies: the prince, a parliament and the people.

The twentieth century was about money and neighbours. After the First World War the old link to Austria collapsed with the empire, and Liechtenstein turned to Switzerland: a customs union came into force in 1924 and the Swiss franc became the currency. Prince Franz Josef II, who took the throne in 1938, was the first prince to live in Vaduz Castle. The country stayed neutral in the Second World War, joined the United Nations in 1990, the European Economic Area in 1995 and the Schengen area in 2011. Women gained the national vote in 1984, later than most of Europe.

Liechtenstein is one of the few European states where a monarch keeps real powers. The prince is head of state, can veto laws, dismiss the government and appoint judges together with parliament. A referendum in 2003 approved a constitution that widened these powers, and voters have since rejected attempts to curb them. Foreign visitors sometimes read the country as a royal theme park. It is closer to a small democracy with a monarchy that most voters want to keep, and with a family that owns a great deal of the country’s wealth.

The castle is the emblem. It stands on a rock about 120 metres above the town, and it has changed shape many times. It was damaged in 1499 and left half-ruined for centuries. Between 1905 and 1912, the architect Egon Rheinberger rebuilt and extended it for Prince Johann II, in a romantic, medieval style that gave the roofline you see today. In 1938, Prince Franz Josef II became the first prince to live in the castle full time. His successor, Hans-Adam II, took the throne in 1989, and in 2004 he handed the daily running of the state to his son, Hereditary Prince Alois, while remaining prince.

The castle is a family home and is not open to visitors, which surprises people who expect a tour. The public can see it in two ways. One is the steep path from the Städtle to a viewpoint just below the walls, which takes 20 to 30 minutes and gives the classic photograph of the country. The other is National Day on August 15, when the prince and his family receive the public in the meadow below the castle. There are speeches, a reception with sausages and local wine, and fireworks in the evening. Expect crowds, closures and a security cordon.

The monarchy shows up in small ways. The prince’s portrait is on stamps and coins, and the state flag flies over the government house. The princely family also owns a bank, a wine estate and one of the great private art collections, which is kept in Vienna and in a family gallery there. The Liechtenstein Center on the Städtle explains the monarchy for visitors, and the Landesmuseum tells the story with objects. What you will not find is a palace guard or a court ceremony: the atmosphere is closer to a well-run municipality than to a capital of pomp.

A practical rule follows from all this. Treat the castle as scenery and the walk as the experience: go on a clear morning, keep to the marked path, do not photograph guards or private windows, and leave drones at the hotel. If you want to see the prince’s hand in daily life, taste the wine from his estate, walk past the parliament next to the Landesmuseum, and notice that a country of this size has its head of state living five minutes from the town hall.

Vaduz has a layout that fits on a napkin. A river plain along the Rhine, a steep hill to the east with the castle, and between them one pedestrian street: the Städtle, meaning little town, about 500 metres long. Almost every public building stands on or beside it, from the Kunstmuseum at the south end, past the Landesmuseum, the post office and the cathedral, to the parliament and the government house at the northern end. Behind the street, vineyards climb the hill in rows, one of the few places where a capital city has vines within walking distance of its parliament.

The buildings are a survey of the last century and a half. The oldest large one is the cathedral of St Florin, built between 1869 and 1873 in a neo-Gothic style to plans by the Viennese architect Friedrich von Schmidt. It was a parish church until 1997, when the Vatican made Vaduz the seat of a new archdiocese. The old government house dates from 1905 to 1906, in a solid, early twentieth-century civic style. Beside it, the parliament building, opened in 2008 and designed by Hansjörg Göritz, is a low modern block of glass and pale stone that deliberately does not compete with the castle above.

The Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, opened in 2000 and designed by the Swiss architects Morger, Degelo and Kerez, is the town’s architectural statement. The exterior is a dark box of tinted concrete mixed with black basalt chips, so that in wet weather the walls shine like slate and on a bright day they absorb light. Inside, the galleries are plain white spaces lit from above. A second building beside it holds the Hilti Art Foundation collection, opened in 2015. Together the two make the small Städtle the closest thing in the country to a museum quarter, and the contrast with the neo-Gothic cathedral 200 metres away is deliberate.

Not everything is modern. Farmhouses and houses with wooden balconies remain in the older lanes behind the Städtle, and the wine-press house, the Torkel, and the Red House (Rotes Haus) sit among the vines. Sculptures dot the pedestrian street, part of a public art scheme that is easy to miss until you look for them: a walk from one end to the other becomes an outdoor gallery. The cars are kept to the edges, which is why the street feels calm even at midday.

The lesson for a visitor is scale. The whole built core can be walked in 15 minutes, so look at the details instead of hunting for the next sight: the black stone of the museum against the white walls of the government house, the vines above the parliament, the castle behind both. Sunday and the hour after 18:30 show the town at its most still, because banks, shops and offices are empty and only cafés and hotels remain lit.

For a state of 40,000 people, Liechtenstein has an unusually good set of museums, and the reason is money. The princely family has been collecting European art since the seventeenth century, one of the largest private collections in the world, and much of it hangs in Vienna and Vaduz. Alongside it, a national art collection, industrial foundations and private families have built a compact museum quarter. The result is that a rainy afternoon in Vaduz is better than in many larger towns.

The Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein holds the national art collection and shows modern and contemporary work in changing exhibitions. It is a small museum and the visit is short, about an hour, which makes it a good match for a rainy morning or the middle of the day. The building itself is part of the visit, and a guide or a wall text will explain how the dark stone was chosen to contrast with the bright Alpine light. Right next to it, the Hilti Art Foundation shows a private collection of early modern art from the Hilti family, whose tool company is based in Schaan; it has its own entrance and its own ticket.

The Liechtenstein National Museum, a few doors up, is the place to understand the country. Its permanent exhibition covers archaeology, medieval life, the rise of the principality and the changes of the twentieth century, when a farming country became one of the richest in Europe. Objects and short films are used to show how people lived in the mountains and the valley, and there are sections on nature and the Rhine. The building was renovated, so check that the permanent rooms are open before you go, and look at the current temporary exhibition.

Then there are the stamps. Liechtenstein has issued its own postage stamps since 1912 and they became a small national industry: collectors around the world buy them, and the stamp office is a source of state income and national pride. The Postal Museum and the shop on the Städtle present the story. Most visitors buy the souvenir passport stamp at the Liechtenstein Center for about three francs, an inked pattern that looks official and is not: it is a keepsake, not a border record, and you do not need it.

Plan the museums in a block. A sensible order is the Landesmuseum first for context, then the Kunstmuseum for the look of the present, with lunch between. Most close on Mondays, and hours change with the season, so check the official sites before you set out. If you have a Swiss Museum Pass or a Liechtenstein museum pass, ask at the desk: the cost of two entries is about the price of a lunch.

Liechtenstein is small enough to have unusual economics. It has more jobs than residents: workers cross the border from Switzerland, Austria and Germany every morning, and the country runs a strong manufacturing base as well as a finance sector. Precision tools, dental materials, food ingredients and machinery are exported worldwide; two of the best-known companies, Hilti (construction tools) and Ivoclar (dental products), are based in Schaan and nearby. Trusts, foundations and banks add more. The average income is among the highest in the world, and prices reflect that.

The country has used the Swiss franc since the 1920s and has been in a customs union with Switzerland since 1924. It is not in the European Union but is in the European Economic Area, and joined the Schengen area in 2011, so there are no checks at the Swiss border and a passport is checked only when you enter Switzerland or Austria. The arrangements are mixed: Swiss customs at the border, EEA rules for trade with the EU, Liechtenstein banks under their own regulator. For a visitor, the effect is simple: prices are Swiss, you pay in francs, and you cross the border without noticing.

Then the wine, which surprises many visitors. The Rhine valley here has grown vines for centuries, and the princely family’s wine estate, the Hofkellerei, farms a vineyard on the slope above Vaduz, close to the castle. It is one of the largest single vineyards in the country, and the cellar is in a house painted red. The main grapes are Pinot Noir, which does well in the warm foehn wind that blows down the valley, and white varieties such as Müller-Thurgau and Chardonnay. The wines are priced as Swiss wines are, and most of the production is drunk within the country.

The estate offers tastings and a shop, and a wine-house restaurant, the Torkel, stands nearby. Tastings are usually booked in advance and cost about 20 to 60 francs, depending on the number of wines. If you are driving, do not taste: the drink-drive limit is strict. If you are not, ask for a flight and a bite of local cheese, and look up the hill at the rows of vines that run beneath the castle wall. It is a rare place where the ruler’s wine is grown in sight of the parliament.

For a visitor on a budget the lesson is to use the small state’s cheap parts. Supermarket picnics, free walks, the castle path and the Rhine dam cost nothing; a hotel bed does not, so consider sleeping across the border in Buchs or Feldkirch or in Schaan and taking the bus in. Museum tickets are in line with Swiss prices. Cash is rarely needed, and a debit card works nearly everywhere.

The country is a valley and a wall. To the west the Rhine runs flat and straight between dams, with the Swiss hills across it; to the east the ground rises quickly to forested slopes and then to 2,000-metre ridges. Vaduz sits at about 460 metres. Triesenberg, a village on a terrace above the town, is at about 900 metres, and Malbun, a small resort at the end of a road, is at about 1,600. Buses climb from one to the next, and the change in weather can be dramatic: the valley can be grey while Malbun is in sun.

Triesenberg has a story of its own. Its people are descendants of Walser migrants who moved from the Valais in the thirteenth century, farmers who settled high valleys across the Alps and kept their own dialect and customs. A small museum tells their story, and the village has wide views over the valley. Malbun is a compact, family-oriented ski area in winter, with easy runs and a village of hotels, and in summer it becomes a base for walking, chairlifts and quiet trails. Serious hikers will find the long trail across the country and steep paths such as the Fürstensteig, which needs experience and good weather (check).

The seasons set the rhythm. Spring brings blossom in the valley and snow on the peaks. Summer has long light and thunderstorms in the late afternoon. Autumn is the wine harvest and the return of the cattle from the high pastures, celebrated in villages with cattle parades in September or October (check the dates). Winter is cold and can be foggy in the valley, but it brings skiing, a small Christmas market and quiet museums. The foehn, a warm dry wind from the south, can lift temperatures sharply in spring and autumn and blow hard: check the forecast before you climb.

The food follows the mountains. The signature dish is Käsknöpfle, small noodles baked with local mountain cheese and fried onions, served with apple sauce. Riebel is an older dish of crumbly corn semolina cooked in milk, eaten with compote or cheese, and a farmhouse breakfast in many mountain homes. Rösti, schnitzel and cordon bleu are Swiss and Austrian imports that appear on every menu. Local wine and fruit brandies round out a meal. Prices are Swiss, so a main course is 20 to 35 francs at lunch and 30 to 50 in the evening.

The language is German, but the spoken form is an Alemannic dialect close to the one in eastern Switzerland and Vorarlberg. Visitors do fine in English, and a simple Grüezi when you enter a shop opens doors. If you learn three words, use Grüezi, Danke and Uf Wiederluege. The one habit worth copying is the local one: get up early, do the outdoor thing in the morning, sit down to a warm meal at lunchtime, and be in bed by 22:00, because the town closes around you.