Devilishly attractive
If it seems perverse to go looking for high culture in these places largely dedicated to high-altitude sport and the outdoors, the truth is that culture has been beating a path to their door for centuries. The dramatic remoteness of Andermatt attracted Goethe, who commended it to Schiller, who then wrote William Tell (without having been to Switzerland himself). And it also attracted the British artist JWM Turner, who in the first decade of the 19th century painted the so-called Devil’s Bridge that was once the sole means of access to the town, crossing a precipitous gorge.