Lauterbrunnen

Lauterbrunnen lies on the floor of a U-shaped glacial trough in the Bernese Oberland, walled in by rock faces that rise four hundred to a thousand metres on either side. Seventy-two waterfalls drop from those walls, and the Staubbach Falls in the village itself fall two hundred and ninety-seven metres in a single unbroken plume, the highest free-falling waterfall in Switzerland. The Trümmelbach Falls run inside the mountain, where meltwater from the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau has cut ten chambers through the rock that are reached by a tunnel lift. The village is the valley terminus for the railways up to Wengen and Mürren and for the line to the Jungfraujoch, which makes it the gateway to the whole region. Its cliffs also draw climbers and have made the valley one of the best known BASE jumping sites in the world.