Davos

Davos is regarded as one of Europe's oldest mountain resorts. It established itself as a health resort in 1860 and as a sports center in 1930. Today Davos is a city way up in the mountains on 1560m that is popular all year round. Not your average Alpine ski village, but a bustling place, famous for its fresh mountain air, its consistently excellent snow cover and one of the most extensive ski areas in Switzerland. It has been attracting skiers for generations and recently gained fame as a hip snowboarding destination.

Davos extends for almost 2.5 miles and is divided into Davos-Dorf and Davos-Platz and is located in Graubunden in the East of Switzerland on the Landwasser river. It is easy accessable Zurich and Chur or via Glacier Express from Zermatt or from St. Moritz.

Davos offers many sporting and leisure activities as well as fine dining, shopping and entertainment. Huge indoor and outdoor skating rinks, a sports center, two sled runs, 143 miles of skiing slopes in winter and 280 miles of picturesque walking path and mountain bike trails in summer. The skiing area and its 45 ski lifts constitute one of Switzerland's largest and most remarkable skiing resorts with snow coverage usually satisfactory between December and April.

Originally Davos was a health resort. Its high altitude and long hours of sunshine eased the suffering of tuberculosis patients from around the world. Robert Louis Stevenson completed Treasure Island while resident at a Davos sanatorium in 1882 and Thomas Mann, the great German writer and Nobel Prize winner in Literature in 1929, spent time in Davos in 1911 where his wife was in a sanatorium. His stay inspired him to write his novel The Magic Mountain, which was published in 1924.

Getting to Davos
Davos is located in Eastern Switzerland, 147 km (92 miles) from Zurich, the nearest airport. Travel time from Zürich is 2.5 hours by car and 2 hours by train. The resort is 419 km (260 miles) from Geneva and 262 km (163 miles) from Berne.
By train, take international train connections to Landquart and change for a train going to Davos.



Tourist Office: (Verkehrsbüro) Tel. 081 415 21 21- Fax. 081 415 21 00; e-mail: info@davos.ch