Switzerland looks tidy, polished and fully renovated. Yet between Lake Geneva and the Engadin stands a surprising number of abandoned places: sanatoriums left behind from the great tuberculosis era, mountain hotels cut off from traffic by tunnel construction, a shut-down cellulose factory on the river Aare, and a military exclusion zone that has been cleared since an explosion in 1947. From the Sanatorio del Gottardo above the Ticino village of Piotta to the Belvedere Hotel on the Furka pass, made famous by the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger, a whole geography of decay runs through every language region. Our map pins 1,883 Swiss spots, spread across the cantons from Ticino (791) to Valais (131).
In short: this pillar lists the 10 best-known abandoned places in Switzerland, one per canton, ranked by visual impact and historical weight. Every place is real, dated and backed by a source. Under each entry sits a free spot from our map: an Add to my map button drops the GPS coordinates into your profile, with no credit card and no subscription.
The terms abandoned places Switzerland, urbex Switzerland, lost places Switzerland and abandoned places map all mean the same thing: buildings nobody uses anymore, slowly reclaimed by nature and time. That map is exactly what we provide.
See the interactive map of all abandoned places in Switzerland
To compare Switzerland with the rest of Europe, we have dedicated pillars to the lost places of Germany and to other countries on our world urbex map.
Urbex Switzerland for free: why Urbex Maps changes the game
Most abandoned places lists online promise free coordinates in the headline, then redirect you to a forum, a Facebook group or a paywall charging 50 francs. We do it differently. Under each of the ten places sits a real spot from our database, with a button that drops the coordinates into your profile for free. No subscription, no credit card, no hidden condition.
Behind that promise is a verification model. A community of over 40,000 explorers has been gathering locations since 2021, and every coordinate is checked at least twice: once by the person who reports the spot, once by a regional moderator who confirms the place still exists. The ten spots given away here are part of that catalogue. The rest, around 1,880 more Swiss locations, is reachable through themed packs that fund the moderation.
This list is ordered by visual impact and historical weight. We open with the Sanatorio del Gottardo, arguably the most photographed ruin in Switzerland, and close with the Mitholz ammunition depot, the heaviest and most strictly off-limits place in the country. Each canton links to its regional map.
Why some famous Swiss abandoned places are not on this list
Search for abandoned places Switzerland and you quickly hit names that no longer qualify. The Schatzalp above Davos, often sold as a ghost hotel, is in fact a working four-star hotel and the model for Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. It does not belong on an urbex list.
The Collombey refinery in Valais, for years an icon of industrial abandonment, has been history since May 2026: its two roughly 100-metre chimneys were blown up on 21 May 2026, and the site is being redeveloped. And the often-cited sanatorium at Mont-Pelerin above Vevey simply does not exist as an abandoned ruin: the real buildings there are an active care home and a former palace hotel converted into luxury residences. These three examples show why we filter hard. What follows are ten places that, in 2026, are still standing and genuinely decaying.
1. Ticino: Sanatorio del Gottardo, the most photographed ruin in Switzerland
Photo: Wendelin Jacober, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Sanatorio del Gottardo is an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium above Piotta in Ticino, built between 1903 and 1905 and empty since 1962. It is the most photographed ruin in Switzerland.
High above the village of Piotta in the Leventina valley, at around 1,160 metres in the municipality of Quinto, stands the best-known abandoned place in Switzerland: the Sanatorio del Gottardo, originally the Sanatorio Popolare Cantonale. Built between 1903 and 1905, the massive building served as a military hospital after the First World War, then as the cantonal tuberculosis sanatorium from 1921. Altitude, clear mountain air and Leventina sunshine were then considered the best available treatment against consumption.
With the arrival of antibiotics, the altitude cure lost its purpose. The sanatorium was abandoned in 1962 and has stood empty ever since, for over sixty years. The long corridors, yellowed tiles and empty cure galleries facing the Gotthard railway make it a pilgrimage site for European urbex. In 2016, the canton sold the building to an investor consortium that planned a winter-sports academy. The project failed: the company has been in liquidation since July 2025, the complex was put up for auction at around 2.4 million francs, and it remains unused to this day.
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2. Valais: the Belvedere Hotel on the Furka, the James Bond bend
Photo: LIU Xiao, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Belvedere Hotel is an abandoned mountain hotel on the Furka pass in Valais, built in 1882 and closed since 2015, made famous by the James Bond film Goldfinger.
In a hairpin bend of the Furka pass road, at 2,200 metres on the border between Valais and Uri, the Belvedere Hotel clings to the rock face. Josef Seiler built a mountain refuge here in 1882, expanded into a full hotel from 1890. Right next to it lies the ice grotto of the Rhone Glacier, the building's real selling point.
The bend became world famous in 1964: in Goldfinger, James Bond races up this very road in his Aston Martin DB5. But the Belvedere had two enemies. The Rhone Glacier retreated year after year, and the famous ice grotto shrank. Above all, the Furka base tunnel, opened in 1982, routed traffic beneath the pass, draining the road of its importance. After a first closure in 1980 and a reopening by the Carlen family in 1990, the final shutdown came in 2015. Since then the hotel has been closed; the iconic yellow building stands empty and ranks among the most photographed subjects in the Alps.
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3. Aargau: Brestenberg Castle on Lake Hallwil
Photo: Alexey M., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Brestenberg Castle is a vacant baroque castle on Lake Hallwil in Aargau, built in 1625 and without lasting use since the mid-20th century.
On the western shore of Lake Hallwil, in the municipality of Seengen, a baroque castle has been waiting decades for a new use: Brestenberg Castle. In 1622, dean Samuel Gruner sold the estate for 4,500 guilders to Hans Rudolf von Hallwyl, who had it rebuilt in 1625 as a baroque country residence. Real fame came in the 19th century: in 1844, Adolf Erismann turned the building into a hydrotherapy spa, a lakeside cure that drew guests from across Europe.
After the cure ended, Brestenberg served as a hotel until the mid-20th century. Then came the long abandonment. Collector Bruno Stefanini bought the estate, which then stagnated for decades. It now belongs to the SKKG foundation, which is weighing its future and gradually introducing interim uses. The castle is neither demolished nor fully renovated, and access is not public. It remains one of the most striking sleeping-beauty buildings on the Swiss Plateau.
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4. Vaud: the Sanatorium des Chamois in Leysin
Photo: Werner Friedli, ETH-Bibliothek Zurich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Sanatorium des Chamois is an abandoned tuberculosis clinic above Leysin in Vaud, built in 1903 and empty since 2002.
Leysin, in canton Vaud, was once the world capital of the tuberculosis cure. Doctor Auguste Rollier opened his first heliotherapy clinic here in 1903, treating bone tuberculosis with sunlight. The same year, the building known today as the Sanatorium des Chamois (originally Hotel des Chamois) rose above the village. From 1956 to 1967 it housed a Club Med, then served as a youth hostel and holiday camp.
Since 2002 the building has stood empty and is described as an architectural ruin, alone in the landscape above the Rhone valley. A project announced in 2016 to turn it into an upscale hotel was never realised. Reports from 2021 to 2023 describe advanced decay and risk of collapse; an EPFL architecture diploma project proposed a renovation that was never pursued. Not to be confused with the many other former Leysin sanatoriums, long since converted into schools and apartments.
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5. Graubunden: the Buvette of Tarasp, the last spa hall of the Engadin
Photo: Archipat, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Buvetta Tarasp is an abandoned spa hall in Tarasp near Scuol, Graubunden, built between 1874 and 1876 and closed since the late 1970s.
In Tarasp, in the municipality of Scuol in the Lower Engadin, stands the most elegant abandoned place in Graubunden: the Buvetta Tarasp, a drinking hall from the golden age of Swiss spa culture. Between 1874 and 1876, architect Bernhard Simon built an octagonal pavilion covering three mineral springs: Bonifacius, Emerita and Lucius. Spa guests from all over Europe drank the iron-rich water that made Tarasp famous in the 19th century.
With the end of spa activity in the late 1970s, the buvette closed; since 2006 it has been off-limits to the public because of rockfall. It is the last surviving hall of its kind in Switzerland, protected as a category A cultural monument. Unlike most abandoned places, this one has a future: the people of Scuol have approved a 3.7 million franc credit for restoration, with an eye on its 150th anniversary. For now, though, the buvette remains a silent, abandoned beauty.
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6. Fribourg: the Le Rosaire preventorium in the Sciernes-d'Albeuve
Photo: Roland Zumbuhl, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Le Rosaire preventorium is an abandoned Art Deco sanatorium above Albeuve in canton Fribourg, built in the 1930s and disused since the 1990s.
Deep in the forest above the Sciernes-d'Albeuve, in the municipality of Haut-Intyamon in the Gruyere region, stands a large Art Deco building that has drawn the French-speaking urbex scene for years: the Le Rosaire preventorium. Built in the 1930s by the Société des Sanatoria fribourgeois, the roughly hundred-bed building served as a preventorium for girls at risk of tuberculosis, run by the Order of the Rosary.
After being abandoned, the building was bought in the 1990s by a Fribourg family; water and electricity have long been cut off. Its red facade and Art Deco stairwells made it a film set, notably for the crime series Anomalia. A developer tried to revive it as an Alpine Spa Resort, but the plan stayed a concept without funding. To this day Le Rosaire remains empty, neither renovated nor demolished. The community gives it the nickname Cheese Sanatorium; it is unverified, and the documented name is Le Rosaire.
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7. Bern: the psychiatric clinic in Bellelay Abbey
Photo: Lutz Fischer-Lamprecht, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bellelay Abbey is a Premonstratensian abbey in the Bernese Jura that housed a psychiatric clinic until the end of 2021; its hospital wings have stood empty since.
In the Bernese Jura, in the municipality of Saicourt, a magnificent 12th-century Premonstratensian abbey housed a psychiatric clinic for over a century: Bellelay Abbey. In 1899, a psychiatric asylum for around 260 patients opened in the former monastery. By 1920 it was overcrowded with more than 340 patients, short of water and hit by typhoid outbreaks.
At the end of 2021, inpatient psychiatry left Bellelay for Moutier; the thick monastery walls could no longer be heated affordably. Since then the hospital wings have stood empty, awaiting conversion. Canton Bern and the Jura bernois.Bienne association plan a space of the senses and exchange, with a cooperative due to take over the buildings around 2028. The abbey church itself remains a visitable monument, but it is the abandoned hospital wings that draw urbex.
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8. Solothurn: the Attisholz cellulose factory, Switzerland's largest industrial wasteland
Photo: Traton, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Attisholz site is a disused cellulose factory on the river Aare near Riedholz in canton Solothurn, founded in 1881 and closed in 2008, long Switzerland's largest industrial wasteland.
On the river Aare near Riedholz, a few kilometres from Solothurn, lies what was once Switzerland's largest industrial wasteland: the Attisholz site. In 1881, Benjamin Sieber founded the Attisholz cellulose factory here, the only one in the country. From 1914, ethanol production was added, and over more than a century the plant grew into a vast complex of brick halls, tanks and pipe bridges.
In 2008, owner Borregaard closed the plant. The huge empty halls became an icon of Swiss urbex and a backdrop for parties, film shoots and photography. Today the site is in transition: in the south, a Biogen plant has been producing since 2016, while the north is being rebuilt over two to three decades into a new district, with interim uses in the old halls. Attisholz is therefore no longer a fully frozen abandoned place, but large parts survive as a raw industrial cathedral.
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9. Zurich: the old Buchs station on the disused Bulach-Baden line
Photo: Arnd Hennemeyer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The old Buchs station is an 1876/77 railway building on the disused Bulach-Baden line in canton Zurich; traffic ended in 1937 and 1969.
In the Zurich countryside, on Dielsdorferstrasse in Buchs, a wooden station building stands far from any track: the old Buchs station on the Bulach-Baden line. The roughly 19-kilometre standard-gauge line opened on 1 October 1877, and the station building was constructed in 1876/77, with its fretwork wooden ornaments and wide overhanging roof.
The line, with its steep gradients, soon lost its importance. Passenger traffic ended on 18 January 1937, full closure followed on 6 March 1969, and the tracks were dismantled shortly after. But the station building stayed, alone between fields and houses, together with the old level-crossing keeper's house. The press presents it as a protected abandoned place: a ghost station without a railway, a silent relic of the early Swiss railway era.
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10. Bern: the Mitholz ammunition depot, the most dangerous place on the list
Photo: Draemmli (Roland Rytz), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Mitholz ammunition depot is a former underground depot that exploded in 1947, in Kandergrund, canton Bern; it is now a military exclusion zone being cleared into the 2040s.
In the Kander valley, in the municipality of Kandergrund, lies a place you must not enter, and which for that very reason belongs on this list: the former Mitholz ammunition depot. During the Second World War, the army built an underground munitions depot into the mountain here. In December 1947, a series of explosions destroyed the depot and part of the village.
Up to 3,500 tonnes of munitions residue still lie in the collapsed tunnels. Since the summer of 2024, the partial evacuation of the village has begun, and the federal government plans a full clean-up that, according to the official timetable, will stretch into the 2040s. Mitholz is a military exclusion zone, life-threatening and strictly guarded. The rule is simple: look from a distance, never enter.
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Swiss abandoned places at a glance
| No | Place | Canton | Type | Built | Closed | Status 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sanatorio del Gottardo | Ticino | sanatorium | 1903-1905 | 1962 | abandoned, up for auction |
| 2 | Belvedere Hotel Furka | Valais | mountain hotel | 1882 | 2015 | abandoned |
| 3 | Brestenberg Castle | Aargau | castle | 1625 | mid-20th c. | empty, SKKG foundation |
| 4 | Sanatorium des Chamois | Vaud | sanatorium | 1903 | 2002 | abandoned, collapse risk |
| 5 | Buvetta Tarasp | Graubunden | spa hall | 1874-1876 | late 1970s | closed, restoration planned |
| 6 | Le Rosaire preventorium | Fribourg | preventorium | 1930s | 1990s | abandoned |
| 7 | Bellelay clinic | Bern | psychiatry | abbey, clinic 1899 | 2021 | wings empty, reuse from 2028 |
| 8 | Attisholz site | Solothurn | industry | 1881 | 2008 | wasteland in transition |
| 9 | Old Buchs station | Zurich | station | 1876/77 | 1937/1969 | protected, no track |
| 10 | Mitholz depot | Bern | military | WWII | 1947 (explosion) | exclusion zone, clearance into 2040s |
Abandoned places by canton in detail
We have dedicated guides to several cantons, with more abandoned places:
- ●Lost Places in Ticino
- ●Lost Places in Bern
- ●Lost Places in Aargau
- ●Lost Places in Graubünden
- ●Abandoned places in Vaud
What are the most famous abandoned places in Switzerland?
Among the best-known abandoned places in Switzerland are the Sanatorio del Gottardo in Ticino, the Belvedere Hotel on the Furka, the Sanatorium des Chamois in Leysin, the Buvetta Tarasp in Graubunden and the Attisholz cellulose factory in canton Solothurn. All ten places on this list are still standing in 2026 and appear on our Swiss urbex map.
Is urbex legal in Switzerland?
Looking at and photographing from the outside is allowed. Entering someone else's property or building, however, constitutes trespass under article 186 of the Swiss Criminal Code, as soon as the place is fenced or marked as private. We strongly advise against forcing access or climbing over barriers. Abandoned does not mean ownerless.
Are abandoned places dangerous in Switzerland?
Yes. Floors ready to give way, asbestos in old sanatoriums and factories, open lift shafts and rockfall are real risks. The most dangerous place on this list, the Mitholz ammunition depot, is a military exclusion zone that must never be entered. Sturdy shoes, a flashlight and, when in doubt, a respirator are part of the basic kit.
Where can I find free GPS coordinates of abandoned places?
Under each of the ten places in this article sits a free spot with an Add to my map button that drops the coordinates into your profile, without a credit card. The full map of abandoned places in Switzerland lists 1,883 geolocated sites.
Which cantons have the most abandoned places?
In our database, Ticino leads clearly with 791 sites, ahead of Valais (131), Bern (115), Zurich (87), Aargau (81) and Vaud (77). In total, 1,883 Swiss spots are listed.
When is the best time for urbex in Switzerland?
In the Alps, summer is ideal, because many high-altitude sites such as the Furka or the Sanatorio del Gottardo lie under snow in winter and the pass roads are closed. On the Plateau and in the Jura, urbex is possible year-round, with spring and autumn offering the best light for photography.
Can you visit the Mitholz ammunition depot?
No. Mitholz is a military exclusion zone holding around 3,500 tonnes of munitions residue inside the mountain. The area has been under evacuation since 2024 and will be cleared into the 2040s. Visiting is forbidden and life-threatening.
How can I contribute to the map?
If you know an abandoned place, you can report it through our platform. Every coordinate is checked by the community and a regional moderator before it appears on the map. That is how the catalogue stays current and reliable.
Conclusion: a country that hides its ruins
Switzerland's abandoned places tell three big stories. The first is tuberculosis: before antibiotics, the altitude cure was the only hope, and places like Leysin, the Gotthard and the Fribourg mountains filled with sanatoriums that became useless almost overnight after 1950. The second is the story of mountain hotels and spa baths cut off from traffic by tunnel construction and shifting tourism, from the Furka to Tarasp. The third is military and industrial, from Mitholz to Attisholz, where war and economic change left whole facilities behind.
These places are not film sets but open-air history books. Those who visit do so with respect: take nothing, damage nothing, enter no private property. The finest way to discover abandoned Switzerland starts with a look at the map. The full overview, with all 1,883 sites, awaits you on our map of abandoned places in Switzerland.