The Grisons: a Swiss canton that holds a whole country's variety
In one Swiss canton you can find olive groves and year-round snow, rivers draining to the North Sea, the Black Sea and the Adriatic, and three official languages. The Grisons, or Graubünden, is so varied that Swiss people call it Little Switzerland, and it recorded the country's hottest temperature ever.
The German name means Grey Leagues, recalling three late-medieval alliances, among them the Grey League itself and the League of God's House, which bound themselves together in 1471 as the Three Leagues. They allied with the Old Swiss Confederacy before 1500 but only became a canton in 1803. Long before that, Raetian peoples lived in the valleys, and Rome made the area part of its province of Raetia in 15 BC. The capital, Chur, known to the Romans as Curia, has traces of settlement from the Pfyn culture of 3900–3500 BC, making it one of Switzerland's oldest towns.
It is the country's largest and easternmost canton, 7,105.2 square kilometres, and the only one lying fully on both sides of the Alps and bordering three countries. Elevations run from 260 to 4,049 metres at Piz Bernina, with well over 1,000 summits in all. The north drains to the Rhine, which forms where the Anterior and Posterior Rhine meet at Reichenau. The Engadin is the only Swiss valley in the Danube basin, via the Inn, while southern valleys feed the Po and the Adige.
Climate swings accordingly. Grono in the south averages 12.4 °C and set the national record of 41.5 °C, while Upper Engadin villages are among the coldest inhabited places in Switzerland. The sheltered inner valleys are notably dry, receiving far less rain than the southern ones.
With just 200,096 people in 2020, it is the least densely populated canton, and it is the only one that is trilingual and the only one where Romansh has official status. One of the birthplaces of winter sports, it is home to resorts such as Davos and St. Moritz, the only Swiss National Park, and the narrow-gauge Rhaetian Railway that threads its valleys.
Source: Grisons
