WORLD HERITAGE LIST

03/ The Convent of St. John at Müstair is a Christian monastery from the Carolingian period, and was founded around 775. The church houses Switzerland's greatest series of figurative murals, painted in the first half of the 9th century. Some frescoes were painted over but restored in the 20th century. Since the 12th century, the convent has been used as a religious center for Benedictine sisters.

04/ The Fortifications at Bellinzona protected the entrance to the Ticino valley and in turn the access to one of the most important Alpine passes, leading to northern Italy. The bulk of the fortifications date to the 15th century, though some parts are centuries older. The property consists of two castles, Castelgrande and Montebello, which are connected by walls, and a third castle, Sasso Corbaro, which was built on an isolated rocky promontory.

05/ This site encompasses one of the highest and most glaciated areas of the Swiss Alps, with peaks such as Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. It provides a geomorphological record of the processes that shaped the High Alps, as well as a diverse habitat for animals and plants, developing in a succession following the retreat of the glaciers. The landscape has played an important role in the development of mountaineering and alpine tourism, as well as in literature and in arts.

06/ Monte San Giorgio, overlooking Lake Lugano, is regarded as the best fossil record of marine life from the Triassic Period (245–230 million years ago). Then the area was a tropical lagoon, flourishing with reptiles, fish, bivalves, ammonites, echinoderms, and crustaceans. Fossils of terrestrial animals are also preserved, as the lagoon was near the land.

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07/ The Vineyard Terraces at Lavaux stretch for about 19 miles along the northern shores of Lake Geneva from Chillon Castle to the eastern outskirts of Lausanne. They date back to the 11th century, when the area was controlled by Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries. Wine has been important for the local economy throughout centuries. The protected area includes villages, individual buildings, roads, and footpaths.

08/ The Albula and Bernina lines of the Rhaetian Railway are two historic railway lines that cross the Swiss Alps. They were built in the early 20th century, providing a rapid and easy route into many formerly isolated alpine settlements. Building the railroads required overcoming technical challenges with bridges, galleries, and tunnels. The site is shared with Italy.

09/ La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle are two towns are located in the remote Swiss Jura Mountains which focused on watchmaking. After devastating fires in the 19th century, both towns were rebuilt to support this single industry. Artisanal production of a cottage industry developed into factory industry of the late 19th and 20th centuries. The town of La Chaux-de-Fonds, with its division of labor in the watchmaking industry, was studied by Karl Marx as a "huge factory-town" in his book Das Kapital.

10/ This transnational site (shared with Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Slovenia) contains 111 small individual sites with the remains of Prehistoric PileDwellings (or stilt houses) —settlements in and around the Alps built from around 5000 to 500 BCE on the edges of lakes, rivers, or wetlands. They contain a wealth of information on life and trade in agrarian Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures in Alpine Europe. Fifty-six of the sites are located in Switzerland. (See map)

11/ This transnational site (shared with Argentina, Belgium, France, Germany, India, and Japan) encompasses 17 works of Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier was an important representative of the Modernist movement, which introduced new architectural techniques to meet the needs of the changing society. Two sites are listed in Switzerland, Immeuble Clarté (pictured) and Villa Le Lac.

12/ The Glarus thrust in the Alps of eastern Switzerland feature a major thrust fault, a geological phenomenon where older rocks are carried onto younger layers in the process of mountain building. As this area is well accessible, it has played an important role in the studies of tectonic processes and geological sciences since the 18th century.

13/ The Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians are used to study the spread of the beech tree in the Northern Hemisphere across a variety of environments and the environment in the forest. The site includes forests in 18 countries. The two forests in Switzerland are Forêt de la Vallée de Lodano and Forêt de la Bettlachstock.