Adelboden Village

One of Switzerland’s less well known resorts Adelboden is a pretty village on a south-facing hillside featuring attractive dark wood chalet style buildings with red and green shuttered windows and Swiss flags flying from their upper floors. The main street, Dorfstrasse, runs for about one kilometre through the middle of the village and is the focal point for most hotels, shops and restaurants.

Adelboden’s main street includes a reasonable selection of shops selling sports equipment, clothing and souvenirs, and Backerei Confiserie Haueter and Confiserie Tea Room Schmid, which are worth visiting for afternoon tea or coffee with pastries and Swiss chocolates. The pretty village Church hosts festive concerts and is famous for its stained glass windows by Augusto Giacometti, the father of sculptor Alberto Giacometti examples of whose work can be seen on the reverse of a 100 Swiss Franc banknote.

From Christmas to Easter, skiers and boarders throng Adelboden’s long, narrow, main street, then in the spring and summer the hikers and bikers arrive. There’s plenty of hiking also in winter with numerous routes signposted from the centre of the village ranging from a short 30 minute walk to full day hiking routes to Matten and Kandersteg. If you prefer a more romantic and effortless form of transport, horse drawn sleighs are available for hire outside the church. The village is best explored on foot but a car will come in handy for getting to and from some of the smaller ski areas 5-10km from Adelboden.

For nearly 500 years until the beginning of the 20^th Century, Adelboden’s main activity was farming and the centre of the village still features a beautiful old farmhouse built in 1855 with a hay store outside for winter feeding. The local economy was boosted by slate mining from 1833 to 1874 then by manufacturing match boxes from 1867 to 1913. The first tourists arrived in 1873 leading to the construction of many hotels, the arrival of the first winter guests in 1901 and the founding of the Adelboden Ski Club in 1903.

From 1943-1945 Adelboden was home to 1,200 wartime “guests of the government” including 600 American pilots who managed to crash land their stricken aircraft in neutral Switzerland before being rounded up by the Swiss Army and pleasantly accommodated in Adelboden hotels. The wrought iron gates to the church were “presented by interned American Airman and escaped POW’s of the British Commonwealth in memory of many pleasant months spent in Adelboden 1943 – 1945”.

Adelboden’s pride in being a permanent fixture on the FIS Ski World Cup circuit is celebrated in the main street by two monuments showing foot imprints of past race winners, including five time winner Ingmar Stenmark and three time winners Hermann Maier and Benny Raich.

Recent and planned development in the village includes a new ice centre, finished in 2010, and the Swissspagroup’s plans for a CHF 140 million investment in the ground-breaking Adelboden Alpine Spa project. The project plan, still subject to approval at local level, features a 5-star superior spa hotel with 91 rooms and over 7,200 m² including underground parking for 100 guests and an impressive 4,500 m² spa and wellness facility with 840 m² of pools, 19 treatment rooms, eight saunas and 16 mineral water pools.

Adelboden Tourist Office
Dorfstrasse 23
CH-3175 Adelboden
Tel: +41 (0) 33 673 80 80
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.adelboden.ch