Liechtenstein has no airport and four railway stations that hardly any train stops at, so you arrive by bus from Sargans or Buchs in Switzerland or from Feldkirch in Austria, and you sleep in Vaduz, Schaan or Malbun. Four days is the honest length — one for the capital and the river bank, two for the mountain half that is the actual reason to come, and one for the Unterland, where the state was assembled out of two bought lordships and given a buyer's name in 1719.
Vaduz and the river bank
The capital is about 5,700 people and the centre is a pedestrian strip a few hundred metres long, which is why a morning covers it and an afternoon does not improve on it. The Kunstmuseum is a black cube of tinted concrete and basalt aggregate finished in 2000, and what it holds is the state collection of modern and contemporary art; the Hilti Art Foundation, in the annexe added in 2015 and sharing the same foyer, adds classical modernism. Neither is the Princely Collections — the Rubenses and the Van Dycks the family is famous for hang in Vienna, and none of that collection is on public view in Vaduz. The Landesmuseum and the Treasure Chamber are a hundred metres up the street. The castle is a twenty-minute climb through vineyard and wood, and the point of the walk is the view back down, because the Prince lives there and it is closed. Then west across the flat to the Alte Rheinbrücke, built in 1871, 135 metres of covered timber, closed to motor traffic since 1975 and the last wooden crossing of the Rhine anywhere. Walk over it into Switzerland and back with nobody asking anything.
Triesenberg, Gaflei and the Fürstensteig
The bus climbs the hairpins to Triesenberg, settled around 1300 by Walser migrants from the Valais whose descendants still speak a dialect the valley below cannot entirely follow; the Walsermuseum on the church square explains the arrangement in half an hour. On to the trailhead at Gaflei, 1,483 metres, a former sanatorium site that is now a car park and a signpost. The Fürstensteig was blasted and built in 1898: a bit over a kilometre of ledge across the west face of the Alpspitz, balustraded and cabled in the worst places, and genuinely exposed the whole way — a sure foot and a head for heights are not optional, and there is nowhere convenient to change your mind once you are on it. Beyond it the ridge runs north to Kuhgrat at 2,123 metres, the high point of the Drei Schwestern, then drops on the Drei-Schwestern-Steig to Planken. Six to seven hours. Snow sits on the ledge into June and the rock is unforgiving wet.
Malbun, Sareis and the Pfälzerhütte
The road tunnels through into the Samina valley and up to Malbun at about 1,600 metres — the only ski area in the country and the only place in it that looks like an Alpine resort, which at this scale means a dozen buildings and a chairlift. The Sareis lift runs summer and winter and puts you on the ridge at 2,000 metres. From there the Fürstin-Gina-Weg follows the crest over the Augstenberg at 2,359 metres to the Pfälzerhütte, built in 1928 by the Palatinate section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club and owned since the 1970s by the Liechtenstein Alpine Association. It stands at 2,108 metres on the Bettlerjoch, on the Austrian border, below Naafkopf, where Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Austria meet at a single point. Lunch there and walk out down the Valüna valley to Steg. The hut opens roughly mid-June to mid-October and the bunks go at weekends.
The Unterland — Schellenberg, the Eschnerberg and Ruggell
The northern third is flat except for the wooded Eschnerberg, and it is where the state legally begins. Prince Johann Adam Andreas bought the Lordship of Schellenberg in 1699 and the County of Vaduz in 1712, and in 1719 the Emperor combined them into a principality carrying the buyer's family name rather than the name of either piece of ground. Two ruined castles stand above the village. The Eschnerberg historical trail runs about fifteen kilometres over the ridge from Bendern past Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement terraces. At Hinterschellenberg a stone put up in 1980 marks the night of 2 May 1945, when roughly 500 men of the First Russian National Army of the Wehrmacht crossed the border under Major General Holmston-Smyslovsky and asked for asylum; the first negotiations were held in the village inn. Liechtenstein was the only state in Europe that refused Soviet demands to send its Russians back, and housed them for two and a half years. Finish down at the Ruggeller Riet, the largest wetland left on this side of the Rhine and the lowest ground in the country at 430 metres, with Siberian iris in late May and early June.
Good to know
The constitutional position is genuinely unusual and it has practical consequences. Liechtenstein is in the EEA and in Schengen but not in the EU; Switzerland is in Schengen but not the EEA; and the two share a currency and a customs union. That means no border control in either direction, and Swiss francs and Swiss prices on both banks. An EU-issued EHIC is honoured on both sides — in Liechtenstein through the EEA and in Switzerland through its own agreement with the EU — but the card is for state-rate treatment only. Mountain rescue is billed to the person rescued and no health card covers it, a helicopter off the Fürstensteig is a four-figure invoice, and UK GHIC holders should check their own card's Swiss and Liechtenstein wording rather than assume, so travel insurance that names mountain rescue by name is worth having before day two. Six kilometres of valley floor between the Rhine and the ridge causes the other recurring bill: Liechtenstein is inside the EU roaming zone and Switzerland is outside it, but a phone standing on the flat will happily hop to a Swiss mast across the river — lock the handset to the local network before spending a day on the west side. There is no airport. Zurich is about ninety minutes away by train to Sargans and bus onward; the four railway stations inside the country are served by a handful of trains a day and are not the network. LIEmobil buses are, and they reach all eleven municipalities, both trailheads and across both borders, with a day ticket under ten francs and a weekly pass worth doing the sum on at four days. Driving in through Switzerland requires the Swiss motorway vignette and it is checked; there are no motorways inside the country and the Malbun road is steep enough to need winter tyres in snow. The mountain season is short and the shoulder months are dead: the Sareis chairlift and the Malbun lifts shut through April and November, the Pfälzerhütte runs roughly mid-June to mid-October, and the Fürstensteig holds snow on the ledge into June — check the trail status on tourismus.li on the morning rather than the week before, and do not start it in rain. Vaduz Castle is the Prince's residence and is closed all year with one exception: on 15 August, National Day, the castle garden opens to everybody, the Prince gives a speech and there are fireworks over the town that evening. It is also the single busiest date in the calendar and the valley's very small bed stock goes months ahead, so either aim for it deliberately or avoid it. Vaduz hotel rates are set by business travel and barely move by season; Buchs or Feldkirch is twenty to thirty minutes away by bus and roughly half the price. The souvenir passport stamp at the tourist office on the Städtle costs three francs and has no legal effect whatsoever. Shops shut on Sunday and the bus timetable thins out with them.
Shorter or longer?
Three more days on the 75-kilometre waymarked route opened in 2019 for the principality's three hundredth year, which threads all eleven municipalities from Balzers to Ruggell with an app narrating 147 points along it. It is valley and hillside walking rather than ridge, so it adds the half of the country this route only passes through — and it works in May and October when the high paths are shut.
Vaduz in the morning — museums, the castle walk, the wooden bridge — and the bus up to Malbun with the Sareis chairlift in the afternoon. You get the shop window and a look at the mountains from a lift. You do not get the Fürstensteig, the Pfälzerhütte or the Unterland, which is most of what makes the place worth four days instead of one.