Holidays to Switzerland Travel Podcast Episode 16 Transcript

The Most Beautiful Villages in Switzerland

You can see the full show notes and listen to this episode > here.


Announcer

Welcome to the Holidays to Switzerland Travel podcast. Your host is the founder of Holidaystoswitzerland.com and the Switzerland travel planning Facebook group, Carolyn Schönafinger. On this podcast, Carolyn will be joined by a variety of guests who share their knowledge and love of the country to help you plan your dream trip to Switzerland.

Carolyn Schönafinger

This is episode 16 of the Holidays to Switzerland travel podcast. I’m really excited about today’s episode as I’m going to be chatting about the beautiful Swiss villages. Whilst I love the largest cities in Switzerland too, I always find myself heading to the smaller villages as I love the slower pace and the charm and the authenticity that they offer. Today I’m joined by Kevin Quattropani, president of the Most Beautiful Villages in Switzerland association. Kevin is going to tell us more about the association and some of the charming member villages. Welcome, Kevin. Thanks for joining me today.

Kevin Quattropani

Hi. Hi Caroline. Thank you for having me.

Carolyn Schönafinger

It’s a great pleasure. Now, I’ve known about the most beautiful villages in France association for a number of years, and I’ve been fortunate to visit a dozen or so of the member villages, but it was only fairly recently that I learnt that there was a Swiss association as well. What can you tell us about the most beautiful villages in Switzerland association and how did it get started?

Kevin Quattropani

Yes, as you correctly said, the French association is very well known because it was found back in 1982, so 39 years ago. Over the years, several similar associations were created in Italy, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Lebanon, Canada and Japan. We were born only in 2015. So six years ago, and in 2017 we joined the federation of the most beautiful villages in the world. That now includes the associations of nine countries. So that’s why we are fairly new on the market, let’s say, compared with the Italians or the French, which were the first to start this type of association.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay, so what criteria do the villages have to meet in order to be considered for membership?

Kevin Quattropani

The criteria is very similar to those set in France and Italy. That means the municipality cannot exceed 10,000 inhabitants. And the village, the historical centre, 2,000. The village must be homogeneous and have valuable elements, such as fountain, picturesque houses, particular churches. Location is also very important, as is its history. In addition, it must be willing to be part of a network to promote its beauty while maintaining its identity.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay. And I’ve found with the French villages that I visit that the residents really take a great pride in being a part of such a, you know, an important association. So I’m imagining that the Swiss villages, the residents really embrace that too.

Kevin Quattropani

It’s true. That’s why for us it’s very important that, I mean, we do. Let’s say. I always say we start from the village and go in the world, like now with Australia. We talk about them, but they have to talk about themselves. Let’s say, for example, they do things like, this is the municipality that does this, for example, invites the inhabitants to put flowers on their windows or to keep everything tidy or whatever. I cannot go there and say these things. This is something that they. They want to do and are proud in making their village nice for all the visitors that come to visit them. So for me it’s very important when they speak with the municipality, because I go and speak with each village, of course, before they join, that they are willing to do this. They are not just doing this to be in a club or whatever, but they really feel it.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. Oh, that’s wonderful. So how does the application process work? Can a village just apply to become a member or do they have to be nominated by a selection committee?

Kevin Quattropani

Well, basically a village can apply and we would talk to them and see if they have the criteria to join. But usually it’s our scientific committee on the basic of his assessments that contacts the villages that have the necessary characteristics because we know what they have to have instead. They don’t really know. So they can write to us. We will go anyway and speak to them and see if it’s something for them, if they meet the criteria. But of course, if we contact them, it means already we have done a basic cheque before we talk to them.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, lovely. Now, there are currently 43 member villages, 42 which are in Switzerland and one is in neighbouring Liechtenstein. Will more villages be added over time if they meet the criteria?

Kevin Quattropani

Yes. At present we have, as is well said, 43 villages and our statute allows a maximum of 50 villages. So we are close to that number. But it’s not excluded that this number will be raised in the future. As already happened in Italy and Spain, for example, Italy has now over 300 villages. Of course, they’ve been going for 33 years and they’re much bigger than Switzerland. But still, when they started they had a maximum of 30 villages set, so things could change. We will never get to big numbers because in Switzerland there are a total of about 2000 municipalities, so there would be no point in having all of them in, of course. So I would say in a range, I mean, anyway, under 100, but I think 70 probably would be anyway the max. It’s not a case of numbers, but of quality. And Switzerland being relatively small, I think between 50 and 70 could be a good number.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Great. The member villages are located all over Switzerland and in and in each of the four different language speaking areas of the country. So I’d like to put you on the spot a bit and just ask you, can you just pick one village from each of the different language areas and share some interesting facts about it?

Kevin Quattropani

Yes, as you said, we have. Switzerland is small, but still we have four speaking languages region and at present we have 17. Our villages are in the french speaking part of Switzerland, 15 in the german speaking part, four in the Romansch speaking part and six in the Italian speaking part, plus the one in Liechtenstein, where they speak German in Liechtenstein. And by the way, Liechtenstein is a very small country. It has a total of 38,000 inhabitants and it has only seven municipalities. So basically, there we will never have more than one village because it would be having half of the villages in anyway. For the french part of Switzerland, an interesting village is Saillon in Valais. It’s famous for its thermal waters. They have a completely new spa which includes a hot river of 37 degrees you can swim in. So this is very interesting. And let’s say the most famous person of Saillon is Farinet, which was a faker. He printed fake money, but for the poor. So a kind of Robin Hood. He used to. For the inhabitants of this was back in the 1818, hundreds. He used to forge false money to give to the poor to be able to buy some food and stuff.

Kevin Quattropani

So that’s why they call him the Robin Hoods of Switzerland. And there is now a very interesting museum totally dedicated to him, the Farinet museum. So I also am very into the special museums we have. Of course, in a village, you will never find the Louvre or il Prado, like in Madrid or in Paris, but you have very small and special museums that very often you find only in that village. And so this Farinet one is very interesting. Then, for the German part, I could speak of Gersau on Lake Lucerne first, because I think Lake Lucerne is quite loved also in Australia. So it’s a typical destination, Lucerne and Gersau. It’s only 30 minutes from Lucerne and up to 1817, actually Gersau was an independent republic, so it wasn’t part of Switzerland. And then it joined Canton Schwyz in 1817, so it was the last to join Switzerland. And it lies at the foot of Mount Rigi, which maybe, you know, it’s quite famous, where the first European rack railway was built. So to go up there, Rickenbach built this rack railway. And another interesting thing I actually just learned last week, and we are going to put it in our guidebook that is coming out this summer, is that there is a local textile mill in Gersau called Swiss Silk, and they made the carpet for the Oval Office of the time of Mister Obama, President Obama of the United States.

Kevin Quattropani

He bought his carpet in Gersau. So it’s nice to know the silk of the United States of America was done in Gersau. And I just learned that a tiny has quite a history. 

Carolyn Schönafinger

Kevin Quattropani

All in all, then, for the Romansch part, which actually is spoken only from 0.3% of the Swiss population. So it’s a language really spoken only in some valleys in Graubunden, in Canton, Graubunden. There we have Tschlin, which is in the lower Engadine, probably. Engadine is, you know it for St. Moritz. St. Moritz is in the Upper Engadin, but actually the most, let’s say the Upper Engadine is now very touristic, very big hotels and stuff. Instead, the lower Engadin is very authentic, not so well known. But this place, Tschlin, it’s actually at the border with other two countries. So if you open, I always say, if you open your window in the morning in Tschlin, you can see three countries, you can Switzerland, you can see Austria and you can see Italy. So this makes it quite extraordinary. Plus they do the Tschlin beer, a beer in Tschlin, which is one of the best in Switzerland. It’s not, let’s say, like Heineken, that you can find everywhere. So you have to really look for it, but you can buy it also in Coop or in Migros or in some other shops in Switzerland, I don’t drink beer, but people that drink beer say it’s very,

Kevin Quattropani

It’s one of the. One of the best ones. And actually they also. It’s called Tschlin, is called the Engadine bread basket, because they really have all the cultivation there and they do the beer on the spot for the Italian part of Switzerland, which is the part I come from, because I come from Lugano, in Ticino. I would say Bosco Gurin. It’s the highest village we have in our canton, at 1500 metres. But it’s less than 1 hour from Ascona, which is on Lake Maggiore. So in Ascona you find palm trees and it’s very mediterranean, and in less than 1 hour you get to Bosco Gurin, when you find pine trees and quite cold. I was there last week, it was -18 degrees so it’s extraordinary, this difference in just less than 1 hour, how you pass from Lake Maggiore on the palm trees to the pine trees of Bosco Gurin. And this village was founded by the ancient Walser people, which are very, let’s say people here look up to this Walser population because they were very, a bit like the Vikings, sort of Vikings for us in Switzerland. So these are the four villages for the four regions.

Kevin Quattropani

Basically, all of our villages has interesting stories and stuff, but I just picked one for each region.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, no, that’s great. So I think, as you just said, one of the great things about all the member villages is that whilst obviously they’re all beautiful, they’re all quite different as well. There are villages with fortified walls, mountaintop villages, some that sit beside a river. What are some of the other differences that make each of the villages unique?

Kevin Quattropani

Yes, this is something the whole world recognises, such a diversity in a nation as small as ours. Basically, you can cross Switzerland from north to south in 3 hours and from west to east in 5 hours. So Australia is something else. But with the change of the language region, which can often take place just in a few kilometres, the language, the religion, architecture, food, climate, basically everything, or almost everything can change. For example, on the lake of Bienne Biel, we have three member villages, La Neuveville, Le Landeron and Erlach. Two are in the same canton, the canton of Bern, but speak two different languages. The third one, Le Landeron, is in another canton, Neuchatel, and has another religion. These villages really border each other, so they are only a few kilometres apart, but they are so different. So this is probably the place where you can really experience this difference in food, in architecture, in language, in religion, on foot, because you can really. I did it. You go on foot from one village to another and everything changes. Also the name, how they call the mayor, for example, here we have some so many in the same language, in French or in German and Italian, different ways of saying mister mayor, like is Italian or il podesta or Gemeinde.

Kevin Quattropani

President Burger gemeinder. We have so many ways. And in the same language speaking region, they still have four or five different ways of saying mayor, for example. So it’s really very full of diversity.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. So it’s incredible, within a few minutes you can be hearing all these different ways to say the same thing, experiencing different cuisine, different cultures.

Kevin Quattropani

Exactly.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah. Amazing.

Kevin Quattropani

Exactly.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Now, one thing I did mean to ask you before, when we talked about how villagers go about applying for membership. Is there a process where they, I don’t know, not get retested every year, but do they need to? Obviously, you know, is there some, some process to make sure that they’re keeping up with all the. The criteria?

Kevin Quattropani

Good question. Let’s say we have less strict than in Italy or in France, for example, where if a village just decides, I don’t know, to move a lamp post, they have to ask the permission to the association. We are not like that. But of course, if there’s something that they change we don’t like, we write to them. And, for example, so a new parking somewhere, we find it’s not good for cars or whatever, we write to them and say, look, for us, this is not good. If you go on with this, you could lose your membership. So we really look at what happens there. And I don’t know, in Australia, but, for example, in Switzerland, in the past ten years, there’s been a lot of municipalities that spring together and found a very big municipality. So that’s a problem, because, of course, the village remains the village, but if the village is part of other 2030 villages, and then the centre of power is very apart from this village, it loses a bit of the contact. So we really urge them not, let’s say, to enter in such a big fusion of villages. Or actually, we just had one that went off under a big city, Neuchatel, which for us is a big city, 40,000 inhabitants.

Kevin Quattropani

Valangin, in the French part, is now actually part of the municipality of Neuchatel. But as they are very far apart in the sense they are in the middle of nowhere, you don’t see the city from Valangin at all. We changed the criteria to say when they join, they have to be one village with maximum 2000 inhabitants in the centre, et cetera. But if something happens over the way and they go under a bigger city, they can maintain their status if they do certain things. So we had to change that, because in Switzerland we are going in that direction. And maybe in ten years time there won’t be any villages. In the sense of a village equals a municipality, the village will be the village. But maybe Ascona, for example, where you went, could be under Locarno. So as a municipality, it could be a bigger. Bigger numbers, bigger region.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, that’s right. And I guess you have to, like. You want the history and the authenticity of the villages to be preserved, but you don’t want to, you know, let them miss out, because they, which is often out of their control, they have to join a larger municipality.

Kevin Quattropani

Exactly. In some cantons it’s really the canton that pushes the villages to join themselves together. So let’s say they’re not obliged, but if they don’t do so, they lose money. So sometimes they do this. But for us, it’s always important to have a person in charge of the village. Nothing. It won’t be the mayor, but it will be a person designated from the new city or the new big village that is in charge only of this village that is member of our association.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Okay? All right. So if you can, I put you on the spot again and ask you, if you had to choose one, only one village, which is your favourite, which one would you tell me?

Kevin Quattropani

So I get this question asked quite a lot of times, and the thing is, I cannot really say, because then the other villages are not happy. What I can say is, for me personally, I really love villages that are not well known, that are really villages, because we have bigger and smaller ones. So generally I’m into smaller ones, which doesn’t mean I’ve been to Australia. I love Sydney. Let’s say, when I look for something authentic, something like this, I really look for small places. So for me, for example, Tschlin, which I mentioned earlier, where they do the beer, where you can open your window and see other countries and stuff, but you are really in the middle of nowhere. I really like that village. Bosco Gurin of the Walser population, I find it very authentic. And especially, let’s say, if you go in low season, it’s really you by yourself. With a local population, this is difficult to achieve in Ascona or in places which are very nice, but the season is basically the whole year, so they are all nice, but I’m more into the smaller ones.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, that’s fair enough too. Well, thanks so much, Kevin. It’s been really great to chat with you today and learn more about the association, and I think many of the listeners would be really interested to visit some of them in the future.

Kevin Quattropani

I hope so, and we will be very happy to welcome them. And thank you for this very interesting conversation.

Carolyn Schönafinger

No, it’s my pleasure. But it certainly sounds like there’s villages that would appeal to everyone, whether they’re interested in history or architecture, or just want to admire the beautiful scenery. I’ve only managed to visit four of the most beautiful villages in Switzerland, so I’m now making it my mission to visit them all in the next few years. So, personally, I hope you don’t add too many more in a hurry, because it’s going to take me longer to get to them all. But I’m sure, like me, you’ve inspired all our listeners to include some of the villages when they travel to Switzerland, too.

Kevin Quattropani

I really hope so. And I’m really, I know that we have really a village for everybody because as we spoke earlier, they are so different, but they have something in common. So you can really find something for people like me that like smaller villages in the middle of nowhere, but also some more jet set village like Ascona, for example, or Gruyeres. I think everybody knows about Gruyeres and the cheese and also the specialities you can eat there, the Cailler chocolate. There’s really something for everybody. Really.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Absolutely. Now I’ll link to your website and also to your social media pages because I have been following your Instagram page. And yeah, it’s just amazing that the photos on there are incredible. So as I said, I’ll put those links in the show notes for this episode and also a link to the article that I wrote recently about the villages where, as you know, I covered 15 of the villages from each of the cantons so they can all be found at holidaystoswitzerland.com./episode 16 So thanks everyone for listening. Until next time, take care and keep those Swiss travel dreams alive.

Kevin Quattropani

Bye for now and see you soon in Switzerland.

Announcer

Thank you so much for listening. For more great resources on planning a trip to Switzerland, make sure you visit holidaystoswitzerland.com where you will find trip planning tips, destination guides, information on transport including swiss rail passes, and much more. You’re also encouraged to join the Switzerland Travel planning group on Facebook where you can ask questions and chat to other past and future travellers to Switzerland. You’ll find show notes from today’s episode at holidaystoswitzerland.com/podcast and be sure to subscribe to the Holidays to Switzerland Travel Podcast so you never miss an episode.

You can see the full show notes and listen to this episode > here.