Until quite recently, nobody with a choice in the matter went anywhere near the Alps in winter and volunteering to do so for the sake of fun and games was a development of the late 19th century. Arthur Conan Doyle claimed (dubiously) to have invented downhill skiing during a visit to Switzerland in 1894 and predicted (correctly) that it would soon catch on.
Before then, for thousands of years, travellers had typically come to the Alps when the weather was good, and not for leisure, but for trade, transit or their health. Spa culture here goes back a long way; archaeologists working in St Moritz, Switzerland, unearthed some hollowed-out larch trunks that appear to have been used as containers for mineral-rich water, to be drunk for its curative powers. The wood was dated to 1400BC. Where wellness is concerned, what goes around comes around. Would you say that a blind faith in the beneficial properties of mineral water sounds quaintly out-of-date or oddly familiar? And will that be still or sparkling?
We’ve learned to love the Alps when they’re cold and snowy, almost to the point where we’ve forgotten that they’re just as lovable when they’re warm and flowery — in many ways even more so. As the seasonal snows melt away and the region sheds its glossy white winter coat and fur-trimmed Moon Boots, one sort of magic is replaced by another. A full spectrum of colour is restored and a gentle breeze blows through the valleys, delicately perfumed with hints of gentian, rock jasmine, bellflower, globeflower, forget-me-not, lupin, alpenrose, cranesbill, buttercup, campion, hogweed, bistort, sloes, blueberries, ripening apples and blossoming herbs.
Where best to go for a bit of all that? Country Life tells you more.
St Moritz, Switzerland
St Moritz is at the southerly, or ‘upper’, end of the Engadin Valley. This valley is, by Alpine standards, not only long but also broad — broad enough to accommodate four sizable lakes and 200 or so smaller ones. This breadth also means that you never feel like you’re trapped at the base of a steep, deep ‘V’. Instead, you feel like you’re reposing comfortably on the more expansive curve of a fat-bottomed ‘U’. There are mountains wherever you look, but they seldom loom over you in the way they generally do elsewhere in the Alps. The lakes and rivers and forests shimmer and ripple away sublimely into the distance.
The Maloja wind is a defining feature of summer in the Engadin Valley. It rises from the Maloja Pass, not far from St Moritz near the Italian border, at around midday, and blows steadily down the valley until the early evening — not so strongly as to cause trouble for gentlemen with hairpieces, but strongly enough to make life interesting for sailors, windsurfers, kitesurfers and others keen to propel themselves at speed over bodies of water. Lake Silvaplana (below), on the edge of St Moritz, is a particular hotspot, though by no means the only one.
Those born under an earth sign rather than a water sign may prefer to exhaust themselves on the nearly 600 kilometres’ worth of impeccably maintained hiking trails that crisscross the valley, and that connect with those of the Via Alpina, a 5,000-kilometre network through all eight of the Alpine countries. Though hardly a secret, this is a surprisingly little-known marvel of joined-up European thinking. With some exceptions, where walkers can go, mountain bikers can go too.
Meanwhile, the old town of St Moritz itself is as seductive today as at any point in its storied history, thick with fancy restaurants, hotels, bars and nightclubs — as well as a thriving art scene. Karsten Greve, Andrea Caratsch, Vito Schnabel, Robilant and Voena, and Hauser and Wirth are all here. Husband and wife Manuela Hauser and Iwan Wirth, both of whom are Swiss, went on their first date at Chesa Marchetta, a restaurant with rooms in nearby Sils Maria. They liked the place so much they recently bought it and did it up. It reopened to sighs of delight in late 2025.
‘What makes it special? Look around! The space! The lakes! The sun! The wind!’ says Susi Wiprächtiger, a retired local councillor turned swimming instructor and tour guide.
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Eight bedrooms and a small garden just off Via Serlas, the swankiest of shopping streets in the swankiest of Alpine towns. And with no shortage of bright, pine-panelled charm. Chesa Nova is offered by Christie’s International Real Estate, price on application (never an encouraging sign).
Megève, France
It was Noémie de Rothschild who put Megève on the map in the 1920s, supposedly as France’s answer to Switzerland’s St Moritz. Why, you might ask, did France need an answer to St Moritz? St Moritz was Switzerland’s answer to Chamonix, which was and remains in France, just around the corner from Megève. And the topography and conditions of Megève are nothing like those of St Moritz. The resemblance isn’t even close. Jean Cocteau, a Megève regular, referred to it as Paris’s 21st arrondissement, which is yet another apples-and-oranges comparison, but does at least capture something of its urbane, bon chic bon genre tone.
French philanthropist and property developer, Noémie de Rothschild transformed Megève into a premier French ski destination in the 1920s.
In any case, put Megève on the map the Rothschilds did. The family still owns several properties in and around the town, including the three famous chalets of the Domaine du Mont d’Arbois. Those chalets are to wood what the Eiffel Tower is to steel, the Pan Am building is to glass and the Taj Mahal is to translucent white marble. A love letter written in lumber. The Rothschild’s architect went on to design more than 100 chalets in the neighbourhood. It’s said that Méribel (again, not terribly far away) is the woodiest of the great Alpine resorts. That may be so, but Megève surely gives it a run for its money. Its outwardly unflashy, yet stealthily sumptuous rustic charm is irresistible. Which is perhaps fortunate for the town’s longer-term future as a summertime destination, since the combination of its relatively low elevation and the remorseless effects of global warming don’t bode well for its wintertime offering.
Incidentally, Megève’s historic Mont d’Arbois golf course — also created for Baroness Rothschild in the 1920s — is the best in the Alps, with the best view of Mont Blanc. Take that, St Moritz.
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As mentioned above, post-Rothschild Megève was largely the work of one architect, Henri Jacques Le Même. This six-bedroom chalet is one of his, though the interiors have been completely modernised. It occupies a covetable spot a nine iron’s chip away from the Mont d’Arbois golf course. It is for sale with Knight Frank for €8.95 million.
Bad Ischl, Austria
The spa town of Bad Ischl sits at the confluence of two rivers.
Picking just one resort town from the many among the sheer peaks and thickly forested valleys of the Salzkammergut region, east of Salzburg, is like picking a single stone from among the great glittering heaps of diamonds at an old De Beers sightholder sale. There’s treasure everywhere.
The best known of these towns is Hallstatt, on the lake of the same name, at the foot of the looming Dachstein massif. Thanks to its utterly off-the-scale cuteness quotient, Hallstatt has in recent years become rather too popular for its own good, its cobbled streets jam-packed with Instagramming day-trippers, the needle-fine spire of its 18th-century Evangelical church lost behind a tangle of selfie-sticks.
Hallstatt is celebrated for its 16th-century alpine houses, lakeside setting and ancient 7,000-year-old salt mines, but sometimes attracts more than 10,000 visitors in a single day.
The spa town of Bad Ischl, 20 minutes or so away, is an excellent alternative, at the confluence of two rivers, rather than on a lake, but comparably gorgeous, less crowded, a little bigger, with more to see and do. In winter, there’s decent skiing to be had on Mount Katrien, which is directly accessible from Bad Ischl by means of an endearingly Wallace and Gromit-esque four-seat vintage cable car. The town is also an excellent gliding-off point for cross-country skiing and ice-skating.
But Bad Ischl came to international prominence as the preferred summer getaway of Emperor Franz Joseph I (who described it as ‘heaven on earth’) and his celebrated wife Elisabeth (Sisi), for whom the Kaiservilla, a wedding present to the couple from Franz Joseph’s mother, the Archduchess Sophie, was reconfigured on a vastly expanded E-for-Elisabeth shaped footprint.
Where the imperial couple went, the hangers-on and ambitious arty types followed. Bad Ischl’s musical heritage is especially rich. Bruckner, Strauss and Brahms spent summers here. The annual Lehár operetta festival in July and August has grown to become the largest of its kind in Europe.
Bad Ischl is a convenient base from which to explore the Hallstatt-Dachstein Alpine Region — the UNESCO World Heritage-listed portion of the Salzkammergut, which was awarded that designation on the basis of its outstanding natural beauty and cultural significance (salt has been mined here since the Bronze Age). Bad Ischl lies a marmot’s whisker beyond that designated area. No hard feelings, though. It’s got its very own UNESCO listing, as a spa town.
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Five-bedroom, bumblebee-yellow Villa Traunkai is right on the River Traun — the clue is in the name — at once central and discreet. Not quite a fixer-upper, think of it instead as possessing a kind of shabby gentility that is wholly becoming of a resort such as Bad Ischl. Yours for €1.95 million from Mangoni Immobilien.
Breuil-Cervina, Italy
‘The whole sky was blazing with stars, larger and brighter than they appear through the dense atmosphere breathed by inhabitants of the lower parts of the Earth. They seemed actually suspended from the dark vault of heaven, and their gentle light shed a fairylike gleam over the snowfields around the foot of the Matterhorn, which raised its stupendous pinnacle on high, penetrating to the heart of the Great Bear, and crowning itself with a diadem of his magnificent stars’
Mark Twain
Italians know the mountain not as the Matterhorn (in the centre of this image) but as Monte Cervino.
Something of a special case, this one. Breuil-Cervinia, in Italy’s Aosta Valley, isn’t, by general consent, the most architecturally remarkable of ski resorts. Nor the most socially polished. Nor the most historically rich. No matter. There are plenty of other pretty, chic and culturally fascinating Alpine towns to choose from. (See above, for starters.) Breuil-Cervinia can only play the hand nature has dealt it. And this it does with consummate skill, safe in the knowledge that it holds two or three aces up its sleeve which, for the time being, make it a surefire winner.
First and foremost, it’s one of the very, very few resorts where you can ski all year round.
Second, thanks to a cross-border cable car, it’s directly linked to one of the very, very few other resorts where you can ski all year round — Zermatt, in Switzerland. Between the two of them, and accessible from either side, is the Plateau Rosà Glacier. Here the eternal ski-bunny may forever cavort in clover, or its frozen, skiable equivalent.
Breuil-Cervinia’s third trump card is the Matterhorn, which straddles the Italy-Switzerland border. Italians know the mountain not as the Matterhorn but as Monte Cervino. It’s beautiful beyond words, whatever language you speak, and from any point of view. Something about the unique elegance of its form and the splendour of its situation contrives to make it the most mountain-like of all mountains, anywhere.
The Matterhorn Glacier Paradise is accessed from Zermatt, and is Europe’s highest mountain station at 3,883 meters.
In short, Breuil-Cervinia is the summer ski resort for those who’d prefer to carry on skiing as if summer never happened.
If your skills are up to it, you can ski down from the glacier for lunch at Ristorante Alpage, a picturesque log-cabin affair on Lago Blu, a short distance from Breuil-Cervinia. Feast on traditional Aostan dishes and wines on the sun-drenched terrace while gazing in wonderment at the matchless Matterhorn. I mean Monte Cervino.
Having said all that, there are of course other things to do in the area apart from skiing. Most of the usual summer-in-the-Alps activities such as hiking, mountain-biking and climbing are on offer. But really the snow is the point. Long may it last.
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As noted on the listing on the Berkshire Hathaway Home Services website, Breuil-Cervinia is a town better known for its modern, architecturally unadventurous apartments than old-fashioned (even if newly built), freestanding chalet-style villas. But here’s one of the latter sort, with four bedrooms, right in the middle of town, as convenient and as cosy as can be.
Not exactly a snip at €7.2 million euros, you could pick up an apartment around the corner for a fraction of the price, but what do you expect if you’re shopping for prime Alpine real estate offered for sale by one of Warren Buffett’s affiliate companies?