St. Moritz

St. Moritz is where Alpine winter tourism began. In 1864, hotelier Johannes Badrutt wagered his English summer guests a free stay if they came back in December and found the season unpleasant. They stayed until Easter. That bet built an industry, and its traces are still visible: the frozen lake below town turns into a stage each February for the White Turf horse races and a polo tournament played on ice, and the Cresta Run, a natural ice track rebuilt from scratch every winter since 1884, still sends riders down headfirst on steel-runnered sledges toward Celerina.

The climate is the reason any of this happened at all. St. Moritz counts around 322 days of sunshine a year, more than almost anywhere else in the country, and locals call the dry air behind that number the champagne climate. It explains the low winter light on the ice and the crowded terraces above town in July, once the skiers are gone and the hikers arrive.

Above the town, Piz Nair rises to 3,056 metres, reachable by cable car, with the full width of the Engadine glacial valley spread out below. The Segantini Museum, built in 1908 on the hillside, holds the largest collection of the painter who spent his final years capturing this light. St. Moritz has hosted the Winter Olympics twice, in 1928 and 1948, and the ice rink and bob run from those years are still in use.