Lorien Strydom Fifty-five thousand cars drive through the Sonnenberg Tunnel every day. They pass beneath Mount Sonnenberg in the centre of Lucerne, Switzerland, on a stretch of the A2 motorway that connects Basel to Chiasso. The journey takes less than two minutes. Almost none of the drivers know what surrounds them. Hidden inside the mountain, behind walls … Read more
Six hundred and fifty feet beneath Giswil Mountain in central Switzerland, in tunnels that once stored ammunition, spare parts for fighter jets, and guided missiles, 90,000 wheels of raclette cheese are slowly ripening in the dark. The temperature holds steady at 11°C. The humidity never varies. No vibration reaches the cheese from the surface. No … Read more
Somewhere beneath the picture-postcard surface of Switzerland — the fondue, the cowbells, the precision railways — there are 20,000 military installations carved into the mountains. Most are sealed. Many are classified. But a growing number have opened their blast doors to the public, offering visitors a chance to walk through tunnels that were state secrets … Read more
The complete story of Switzerland’s Réduit National — how a neutral nation built 20,000 fortifications inside the Alps to deter invasion, from the 1880s to the present day.