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Learn about the the economic and cultural impacts of the Swiss Alps:
“The mountains hold special significance in Swiss history and culture, as both the physical boundary and site of encounter between two archetypal Europes, Italian and Germanic.”
“Alpine crossings have regularly mediated cultural and professional exchanges between Italian, Italian-Swiss and German-Swiss architectural cultures.”
"Switzerland’s national and international identity has inextricably—controversially—been linked to its mountainous topography.”
“This firm connection in the popular imagination between Switzerland and the Alps has been driven by two overlapping functions, symbolic and pragmatic.
“four linguistic regions and three major European cultures”
“Switzerland’s 2300 communes as self-governing administrations”
“The fine network of cultural and administrative borders had to be stitched over, with a federal counter-network of transit connections. The railways were harbingers of modernity: a united Switzerland had to be a modern Switzerland, one that could be crossed by traffics of people and goods, an efficient transit point at the heart of Europe.”
“The mainstay of the modern Alpine economy is a combination of mining and quarrying, manufacturing, industries, and tourism.”
“Mining has been carried out since Neolithic times and is still significant in the Erzberg of Austria, where iron has been extracted from the mountain since the Middle Age.”
“pulp and paper plants that utilized the Alpine forests were established in the Eastern Alps of Austria”
“The most significant economic change for the Alps has been the development of mass tourism since World War II.”
“There are some 600 ski resorts in the Alps”
“winter and summer tourism have injected enormous sums of money into the economies of the Alpine nations”
