The Swiss voice in the world since 1935
Top stories
Stay in touch with Switzerland

Swiss ski resort opens tower at 3,020 metres above sea level

tower in ski resort
The tower is close to the summit of the Titlis mountain in canton Obwalden. Keystone-SDA

On Friday, the Engelberg ski area in canton Obwalden unveiled the conversion of an antenna tower into a visitor attraction featuring a restaurant and shop. At an altitude of 3,020m, it marks a European record.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

After three years’ work, the Titlis Tower is the highest habitable tower on the continent. The construction, dating from the 1980s, was previously used as a telecoms transmission tower. It is located close to a glacier and at the top of the highest ski lift in the area, a few hundred metres from the summit of the Titlis mountain.

The tower will charge CHF19 ($24.30) to access a platform that can hold up to 500 people. There are also two glazed luxury containers housing a 125-seat restaurant run by an award-winning chef, and a boutique store for a luxury watch brand. It is also equipped with new staircases and lifts. At a cost of CHF150 million, the whole project was designed by the Herzog & de Meuron architects.

There will not be an inauguration celebration for the tower, out of respect for the victim of a fatal ski lift accident on March 18 in the Engelberg ski area. The tower will be publicly open from Monday.

More

The Titlis skilift company also plans to build a new arrival station by 2029 to replace the existing one at the foot of the tower.

The project has led to an exchange of 1500 m2 of land between cantons Obwalden and Bern. The planned infrastructure will therefore be located solely on Obwalden’s territory.

Adapted from French by AI/dos

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch

External Content

Related Stories

Popular Stories

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR