Brig

Brig sits at the head of the Rhône valley where several routes meet: the Simplon south to Italy, the Furka and Grimsel east and north, and the Lötschberg tunnel under the Bernese Alps.

That junction is the whole reason for the town, and it made one man very rich.

The name is German. French speakers call the town Brigue, and Italian speakers Briga.

Sebastiansplatz and the old town

The station is a large building at the north edge of town. Bahnhofstrasse, the main shopping street, runs south from it into the old town and comes out at Sebastiansplatz.

On the corner of the square stands the Sebastianskapelle, a small chapel Stockalper had built in 1637, ringed by a network of narrow lanes worth wandering through.

Alte Simplonstrasse leads south-east from the square, past the town houses of the local aristocracy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and comes out at the palace.

The Stockalper palace

Kaspar Stockalper (1609–1691) held the monopoly on the salt trade over the Simplon, ran a private postal service, financed mercenary companies and lent money to half of Europe. He was, for a time, probably the richest man in Switzerland.

He built himself the Stockalperschloss between 1658 and 1678 — the largest private building of the Swiss baroque, with three towers topped by gilded onion domes named for the three magi, and an arcaded courtyard that would not be out of place in northern Italy.

The town eventually turned on him and he fled to Italy for eight years, returning only at the end of his life. The palace is now open to visitors and holds the town museum; the courtyard is free to walk into.

His first fortune came from the silk trade between the Simplon and Lyon, before the postal service and the salt monopoly that followed. At the height of his power he was elected president of the Valais’s governing council, its highest political office.

He fled to Domodossola, just over the border; he returned to Brig only near the end of his life, and died there at 82.

The state rooms can also be visited, though the guided commentary is in German only.

The Simplon

The pass road south was rebuilt by Napoleon between 1801 and 1805, so that artillery could cross to Italy, and it remains one of the great engineered roads of the Alps. The Simplon Hospice near the summit is still run by the canons of the Great St Bernard.

Napoleon’s road ran for 35 km, and the pass itself begins just beyond the edge of town.

Underneath, the Simplon railway tunnel was the longest in the world when it opened in 1906 at just under 20 km, and it held the record for more than fifty years. Trains from Brig reach Domodossola in Italy in twenty minutes, and Milan in under two hours.

The Lötschberg line north is the other half of the junction, carrying car-shuttle trains under the mountains to Kandersteg — see driving in Switzerland.

Around the town

Brig itself is modest: an arcaded main square, the palace, and the Rhône. What it offers is proximity.

• Brigerbad — thermal baths a few kilometres away, including an open-air pool cut into a rock grotto; see thermal baths
• Rosswald — a plateau above the town, reached on foot, a good walk in summer
• The Aletsch glacier — the cable cars from Mörel and Betten climb to Riederalp and Bettmeralp, car-free villages on a sunny shelf, and from the Bettmerhorn you look straight down the longest glacier in the Alps for a fraction of what the Jungfraujoch costs
• Belalp — a sunny plateau reached by cable car from Blatten, a village of dark timber houses below; from Blatten you can also visit the Massa cave, climb by the glacier, or walk along old irrigation channels. Above, eleven lifts serve Hohstock (3,100 m) in winter, including a ski run through a snow tunnel
• Zermatt — an hour up the side valley from Visp, one stop away
• Saas-Fee — another popular ski resort in the region
• The Goms — the high valley east towards Andermatt, with dark timber villages and cross-country skiing
• Binntal — a nature reserve within the Goms known for mountain crystal; the valley has more than 100 km of marked winter ski trails
• Grimsel Pass and Nufenen Pass — the first leads to the Bernese Oberland, the second to Ticino; see mountain passes
• Oberwald — start of the Furka-Oberalp line, which crosses the Furka pass to Andermatt through terrain above 2,000 m; see panoramic trains
• The Lötschberg — a path along the south-facing slope above the rail line gives some of the best views in the area; see hiking

The Aletsch glacier’s listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site covers the wider Jungfrau-Aletsch-Bietschhorn area. Brigerbad itself is among the larger thermal complexes in the country, with a water slide of some 180 metres and an Olympic-length pool alongside the outdoor grotto pool.

Getting there

• By train — Bern an hour through the Lötschberg base tunnel; Zurich about two and a half hours; Geneva about two hours along the Rhône.
• From the airports — direct trains run from Geneva Airport, via Lausanne and Sion, and from Zurich Airport, via Bern.
• The Glacier Express stops here between Andermatt and Zermatt.

Festivals

In January comes the witches’ descent at Belalp: around a thousand skiers dressed as witches race 12 km down the mountain. In August a sheep festival combines yodelling competitions with sheep-shearing. See festivals for more.

When to go

Summer for the Aletsch and the passes; the Simplon road is open all year but the Furka and Grimsel are not. Brig is a place to change trains and spend two hours, rather than a destination in itself — but those two hours are better spent in the palace courtyard than on the platform.