In August 1787, Genevan naturalist Horace Bénédict de Saussure climbed Mont Blanc with the aim of answering a seemingly childish question: why is the sky blue?

In 1796, Jean-Jacques Dufour emigrated from the Lake Geneva region with the stated aim of becoming a successful winegrower in distant America. The Swiss grower founded the colony of Vevay, Indiana, which did indeed manage to produce wine.

The history of Swiss cycling is full of thrilling stories. One of these is Beat Breu’s historic victory on the Alpe d’Huez in 1982. Much has already been written about this win. What very few people know, though, is that Beat Breu immortalised his victorious ride in meticulous detail in a terrain model.

Opinions were divided on naturopath Arnold Rikli. He delivered his holistic form of treatment, which involved bathing in the nude, at a sanatorium he had set up himself. Not in Switzerland, but in what is now Slovenia. The Monte Verità counterculture group was inspired, ultimately, by many of Rikli’s ideas and practices.

Schang Hutter, who died in 2021, created a memorial to the Holocaust in 1996. Two years later, his sculpture Shoah stopped many people in their tracks on its journey around Switzerland, but the piece also came in for harsh criticism.

Nicolaus Copernicus is considered one of the founders of modern astronomy. His heliocentric planetary model unleashed an outcry in Reformation circles, especially in Switzerland.

Highs and lows are part of everyday life in Swiss cycling – both figuratively and literally. The sport of cycling can look back on a history filled with anecdotes.

Our cousins to the north and west boast hundreds of them: tree-lined avenues. Rows of trees are a defining feature of many French and German cities and rural landscapes. Here in Switzerland, avenues have never had the same significance. But they’ve always been here, though. One particular avenue of trees has recently been crowned Switzerland’s “Landscape of the Year 2022”.