On a sunny day in winter, covered with a fresh fall of snow, Wengen looks idyllic and very picturesque. This panoramic photograph shows how some clouds can hang in the valley.

Wengen - Jungfrau visitor guide showing a virtual tour of 'Wengen' linked to an interactive map with local and travel information. 360° panoramas from Bernese Oberland.

Wengen is a very popular mountain resort in the Jungfrau region of Switzerland. In the summer people flock here for mountain walking and climbing and in the winter thousands come to ski in some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in Switzerland.

Wengen is a car-free village, perched at an altitude of 1274m on a hanging valley overlooking Lauterbrunnen Valley, only accessible via mountain train from Lauterbrunnen Station or Keine Scheidegg Station. The village depends almost entirely on the tourist industry, and contains numerous hotels, mountain chalets and apartments to cater for visitors. Most of the shops, restaurants and bars are clustered around the high street where there is the Tourist Information Center, near to Wengen Station. As well as the mountain train, a cable car takes visitors up another 948m to near the top of the Männlichen (2343m).

In the winter season, Wengen becomes the center of the Männlichen-Keine Scheidegg-Grindelwald ski area, which has over over 200km of piste, with 40km covered by snowmaking. At the height of the ski season more than 10,000 people can be found in Wengen at any time. Wengen also boasts the longest Downhill Ski Run on Earth, the Lauberhorn-Weltcup Abfahrt which descends 4.455 km (2.77 miles) from near the top of the Lauberhorn to the finish line in Innerwengen.

Wengen is actually quite an old mountain village, though little known before the advent of mountain holidays and skiing. The earliest mention of Wengen in official documents dates back to 1268. Wengen was originally a farming community but tourists and visitors started to arrive in the early 1800's. Quick to recognize the economic potential of this new trend, Wengen opened it's first hotel in 1859. The Wengernalpbahn in the 1890's and from this point on tourism expanded rapidly. The World Cup ski races have been held in Wengen from 1930.

For more information about skiiing in Wengen, please seek our Jungfrau ski page, which will tell you more about the resort, transit times and also link these panoramas to an interactive piste map of the area.

Train: Lauterbrunnen Station or Keine Scheidegg Station.
Ski: Ski runs descend into Wengen from Kleine Scheidegg.