There is a path that ribbons out from the village of Andermatt, hugging the Swiss mountains while red Glacier Express trains toot above and the river runs below. On either side of the path are marmots, yaks, highland cattle, goats and also sheep, guarded by llamas to keep them safe from wolves. In summer, farmers hand-gather meadow flowers, dotted with wild strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. In autumn, the leaves turn and the temperature drops. By winter, all is covered with a blanket of snow. I walk this path multiple times a week and every time a little more of this mountain life, this Alpine village, seeps into my bones. It has become my home.
It is more than 15 years since I came to join my now-husband in Andermatt, where he was living, and where we decided to build a house, a home to raise our family. Such a move to the mountains, to places once seen exclusively as skiing destinations, is being made easier by Alpine resorts rising to the challenge of supporting four-season living; in my experience, it also takes a shift in mindset. It’s something more people are now considering.
“In a post-pandemic world, ‘digital nomads’ can work almost anywhere,” says Jeremy Rollason, head of Savills’ ski department. And according to the 2025 Knight Frank Alpine property report, 44 per cent of the clients surveyed said they now prioritised year-round activities, “highlighting a shift in the Alps market’s appeal”.
“There is a wave of people from the UK interested in moving to Switzerland because of the new British tax regulations that came into effect this autumn — we have up to five times the amount of applicants this year compared to last year,” says Kornel Wick, private client tax adviser at PwC in Zurich. And it’s not just Brits; other nationalities looking to move to Switzerland include Norwegians and Germans, says Wick. “Andermatt, along with Wengen and Verbier, are the three hotspots that people want to move to because the mountain cantons tend to be more flexible in their lump sum tax agreements.” In Andermatt, there has been a jump of 22 per cent in primary residents since 2010; 33 per cent are foreigners.
Grégoire Uldry, partner at the legal firm Charles Russell Speechlys in Geneva, says: “As well as from the UK, we also noticed an increase in inquiries coming from the US after the elections in 2016. We anticipate this to be the case again this year.”
For prospective international arrivals, the resorts that top the list for being suitable for living in all year round usually have three qualities. The first is good infrastructure. “If you’re buying for year-round living or a co-primary residence,” says Roddy Aris, partner at Knight Frank, “it’s not about the geraniums in your chalet’s window boxes, it’s about the available facilities such as schools, the healthcare system.” Chamonix, Crans-Montana and Gstaad all have international schools with good reputations; Verbier opened its second, a ski-in, ski-out site, in 2021, and I have heard whispers that a new international school is being set up in St Moritz.
Second is access to well-functioning international airports. “Not everyone is obsessed with skiing,” says Giles Gale, founder of Alpine Property Finders. “Lower lying resorts such as Megève, an hour from Geneva airport, is popular with the French as it’s six hours by car from Paris, and Kitzbühel, favoured by German high society from Munich, are adapting well and becoming desirable primary home destinations.” Andermatt is one-and-a-half hours from Zurich airport and two hours from Milan Malpensa airport.
Third is snow, which, for many, remains a top priority. As climate change increasingly affects the length and quality of snow seasons, keen skiers are looking for high-altitude resorts with good snow resilience such as Zermatt, Verbier and Val d’Isère. Andermatt is in the top 25 global ski locations as reported in the 2023-24 Savills Annual Ski Resilience index.
But with snow levels increasingly a challenge for many, resorts have long been investing in year-round attractions. Alongside rock climbing, trail running, mountain biking, spas, and golf courses is culture: the summer music festival Zermatt Unplugged launched in 2007 and now attracts more than 30,000 visitors a year. Andermatt has a 663-seat concert hall with views of the mountains, inaugurated in 2019 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. According to the 2024 Knight Frank Ski Property report, the population of Chamonix swells from 10,000 to more than 130,000 in the summer months, helped by its jazz and classical musical festivals, and numerous summer sports competitions. The adage “I came for the skiing but stayed for the summer” feels more apt than ever.
When I first visited Andermatt it was a quiet mountain village, beloved by ski tourers for the off-piste runs and, in the summer, by petrol heads and road cyclists who climbed the twisty mountain route of the Furka Pass. Since 2005, developer Andermatt Swiss Alps — in which Egyptian-born billionaire Samih Sawiris has a 51 per cent stake — has invested more than SFr1.55bn ($1.76bn) in the resort; a further injection of SFr149mn came from Vail Resorts. Sawiris bought land from the Swiss army to build new housing adjacent to the old village and negotiated a unique deal with the Swiss government to bypass the current Lex Weber and Lex Koller laws and allow house-hunters to buy without needing a permit or having to become a primary resident of Switzerland. According to the UBS 2024 Alpine Property Focus report, Andermatt is now the fifth most expensive resort in the Swiss Alps in which to buy a property.
Fifteen years ago, none of my friends knew of the small Swiss village to which I’d moved. A few years later, though, and the five star Chedi Andermatt hotel was being advertised in the papers every week. Suddenly, everyone seemed to have heard of Andermatt and wanted to visit. My Instagram feed featured Londoners eating sushi on the mountaintop terrace at the Japanese restaurant. Jennifer Lawrence was hanging out in a local wine bar. Naomi Campbell was helicoptering in for a party.
Nevertheless, Andermatt doesn’t feel like St Moritz. Head to a wine bar in town and you can get friendly with the locals. Or even better, join the local wild swimming group to enjoy the heart-stoppingly cold river water and some Wim Hof breathing. Yet even Swiss people can be surprised that I live in Andermatt full time. Swiss passport control often raise an eyebrow when they see my address.
And while I might miss family and friends, there is much to make up for it: mountain barbecues (the Swiss even have a special way to skewer their sausages) and picking wild blueberries; the fresh air and drinking mountain water; the local quirky festivals (think fancy dress and cow bells so loud, the children wear noise-cancelling headphones). I love the way my kids walked to school by themselves, even in kindergarten, and that the local police taught them how to cross the road, Swiss style. It’s living here in the off seasons that really makes you feel like a local. Snowfall in September doesn’t surprise me any more, nor does factoring in extra time to chat when I walk down the street. I know I’m lucky to have found a community that embraces both locals and foreigners.
Four-seasonal living was a huge factor for us when building our house, both inside and out. We wanted to build a year-round home that reflected our tastes, not just a holiday house, or something completely traditional. We had an advantage in that unlike ski resorts such as Gstaad or Grimentz where there are strict building codes, Andermatt’s more relaxed planning regulations afforded us relative freedom in our design.
We decided on a modern structure riffing off the work of Swiss father-and-son architects Rudolf and Valerio Olgiati — together with influences of traditional Alpine huts and camping tents — using larch, glass and red concrete, imprinted with wooden boards. We have a cosy stübli, a wood-panelled television-room-come-kids’-playroom, alongside sunny balconies and swings in the garden. There are mid-century armchairs with Cathy Nordstrom cushions, modern Italian chairs, antique Swiss wooden stools and a Pinch sofa. It is definitely not a traditional Swiss chalet.
“The words ‘mountain chalet’ can be interpreted with quite a narrow look,” says architect Jonathan Tuckey, who co-designed our house and is setting up an office in Andermatt this autumn, where he has refurbished a house of his own, the late 18th-century Halbhaus, or Half House. “These chalets tend to be new wood made to look old, stuck on to a concrete frame, with interiors of animal skins, black and white photos of people skiing down hills. It is a very safe, generic look. When we design mountain houses for our clients, they always come to us with a set of personal requirements and ideas. The design then starts to become particular. It’s the real difference between a home and a holiday house.”
Freed from conventional restraints, modern mountain homes can combine a variety of inspirations. One house outside Kitzbühel saw Tuckey combine a European take on Japanese inspired wabi-sabi interiors. Tyler Brûlé’s home in St Moritz, designed by MACH Architektur, has a strong mid-century modern aesthetic. Gordon Lawson, a real estate agent at La Floria Immobilier who moved to Chamonix 19 years ago from New York, built a very modern house alongside his 1920s home. “We wanted a Manhattan-style loft so we worked with local architects Haag & Baquet to create a light, airy, upstairs open space. Local building laws can be strict — such as roof incline angles — but local architects can be excellent at finding a more modern take within those constraints.”
Masha Gordon, alpinist and philanthropist, wanted to create a feeling of refuge and calm when renovating her farmhouse just outside of Chamonix. “It’s not a holiday house, it’s my home,” she says of the rural house which now has a very modern aesthetic. “It has cement floors, the ceiling reaches 5 metres high and we have an indoor climbing gym. Large windows frame the Mont Blanc range, where I can see the mountain faces I’ve climbed. You really notice the four seasons living here and it is very peaceful.”
The style of newly built houses has also moved on. “When we started to build in Andermatt, we used quite traditional materials and room layouts,” says Russell Collins, chief commercial officer of real estate at developer Andermatt Swiss Alps. “Recently we’ve seen demand for a more modern interpretation, which has led us to work with architects not usually associated with Alpine design — such as Patricia Urquiola.” The Maya development, designed by Urquiola, is a collection of 14 apartments and three penthouses, plus a restaurant, Igniv, from three-Michelin-star chef Andreas Caminada.
Modern maybe, but Urquiola’s design is rooted in landscape and history. “We drew inspiration from Alpine traditions, evoking Swiss architecture,” she says. “We juxtaposed these with innovative materials and organic forms. When we talk about reinterpretation, we’re not discarding the past, but allowing it to evolve with the tools, materials, and technologies of today.”
Many Alpine homeowners are adapting their houses for year-round living. This might be through the installation of more sustainable heating systems or the addition of home offices. According to the 2024 Knight Frank Ski Property report, 54 per cent of those surveyed said that they either do or would consider working from their home in the Alps for longer periods, given they now work remotely on a more frequent basis.
For Jane Gottschalk, co-founder of skiwear brand Perfect Moment, whose husband has a family house in Gstaad, where their children have attended school locally during the winter, being able to switch with ease between their Swiss and London lives is key. “With the ability to work remotely, being in the mountains is like ‘being in the office’ for as much as we are able. We can balance work meetings and travel to and from pretty seamlessly.” Tian Chiang of MACH Architektur says that “while working on the Yara building in Andermatt we incorporated niches to create home offices in each apartment — it was important to think not just how this generation wants to live there year-round but how the next one will too”.
Perhaps the most important qualities needed, however, aren’t just having a home office or finding good snow resilience, but rather the feeling of having found the right place to settle. Of feeling rooted into an authentic community and connected to the Alpine way of life. ‘‘Some people need the sea, but I need the mountains,” says Bernhard Russi, Swiss Olympic ski champion, who was born in Andermatt and now lives there throughout the year. “The snow and the granite of the mountains have a certain smell, a certain sound. They pull me to them, they are my home.”
I can’t say that I can smell the mountains in the same way as Russi, but when I get off the plane at Zurich airport and board the train to Andermatt, I know exactly where I’m heading.
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