Self-Guided Walking Tour in Davos

Why Walk Davos? A Self-Guided Tour

Davos is two things at once: the highest town in the Alps at around 1,560m, and a name that carries serious cultural weight. Thomas Mann set 'The Magic Mountain' here. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted his most important late work on these slopes. Politicians fly in every January for the World Economic Forum. Most visitors come for skiing or hiking and never realise the village itself rewards a slow walk on foot. That is the gap this route fills.

The town stretches long and thin along one valley, split into Davos Platz and Davos Dorf, connected by the dead-straight Promenade. That layout makes it easy to follow on foot: you walk one main axis, with a funicular detour up to the Schatzalp shelf in the middle. This loop links the Saturday market, the Kurpark from the sanatorium boom, the Kirchner Museum, the local history collection up in Dorf, the Belle-Époque Schatzalp hotel, Europe's highest alpine garden, and the small museum that tells the tuberculosis story behind it all.

Walk it instead of wandering because the order matters. The medical and literary history only makes sense in sequence: market and Kurpark set the scene, the museums explain why a farming valley turned into a global sanatorium, and Schatzalp is the payoff where the whole 'Magic Mountain' world becomes real. Do it on a Saturday so the market is running.

The Route: 8 Stops

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Route Map

Your Davos Walking Tour, Stop by Stop

1. 1

   Davos Weekly Market

   The loop closes where it opened, back on the Promenade in Davos Platz. By now the Saturday market has likely packed up, but ending here on foot lets you read the town differently than you did at the start. You arrived knowing Davos as a ski resort or a conference name. You leave understanding it as a place built around lungs, altitude and a long literary shadow. This is the moment to eat that Bündnerfleisch you bought hours ago, or to settle into one of the Promenade cafés for a proper meal. The market itself is free and open access, morning only, so if you want to repeat it, come back next Saturday before midday. The Promenade is flat and easy underfoot here, a good place to end tired legs. If the funicular timing or museum hours pushed your day around, this central axis is where everything reconnects.

   Location

   Davos Weekly Market on Google Maps ↗

   End of tour

2. 2

   Kurpark Davos

   

   A few minutes north along the Promenade brings you to the Kurpark, a green public square that dates from the 1880s sanatorium boom. It is always open and free. The park exists because of the cure: when Davos filled with tuberculosis patients sent here for the thin, dry mountain air, doctors prescribed a daily slow walk, the 'Kurpromenade', and the town built parks and level paths for exactly that. Sit on a bench by the Brunnen (fountain) and you are sitting in the same spot where invalids in deck chairs once took their rest cure. The lawn and trees still function as the town's central breathing space. This is a short stop, five or ten minutes, but it frames everything that follows. Every museum on this walk traces back to the moment a quiet alpine valley reinvented itself around lungs and altitude. From here keep heading along the Promenade toward the modern concrete building set back from the street.

   Hours

   Always open

   Price

   Free

   Location

   Kurpark Davos on Google Maps ↗

   5 min walk to next stop

3. 3

   Kirchner Museum

   

   The low concrete-and-glass building near the Promenade is the Kirchner Museum, opened in 1992 and built to hold the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938). Kirchner, a founder of German Expressionism, moved to Davos in 1917 to recover and stayed until his death, painting the surrounding mountains, farmers and Alpine light in violent colour. You are looking at his work at the exact place it was made, which is the point of the whole collection. Open Tuesday to Sunday and public holidays, 11:00 to 18:00, closed Mondays. Admission is CHF 15. Budget 45 minutes to an hour. The building itself is worth a look even from outside: frosted glass roofs designed to pull in soft daylight. Tip: go on a grey or wet day, the diffused light inside is best when it is overcast, and you will want an indoor stop if the weather turns. From here the route runs north up the Promenade toward Davos Dorf.

   Hours

   Tu-Su,PH 11:00-18:00

   Price

   CHF 15

   Website

   kirchnermuseum.ch ↗

   Location

   Kirchner Museum on Google Maps ↗

   20 min walk to next stop

4. 4

   Davos Local History Museum

   

   The long walk up to Davos Dorf delivers you to the Heimatmuseum at Museumstrasse 1, housed in the Grosses Jenatschhaus, a 16th-century patrician house that is half the attraction. Inside, the collection covers the full arc of Davos: Walser settlers who cleared this high valley in the Middle Ages, alpine farming life, and the transformation into a sanatorium town and sports resort. This is the human-history counterweight to the Medical Museum's narrow medical focus. Opening hours are limited and seasonal: Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday, 15:00 to 17:00, so time your walk to land in that window or you will find it shut. Check the website (heimatmuseum-davos.ch) for the current admission price and seasonal opening before you commit the walk up to Dorf. Guided tours are available on request by phone. Budget 30 to 45 minutes. After this, head back toward Davos Platz and the lower station of the Schatzalp funicular for the climb that gives this walk its literary payoff.

   Hours

   Tu-W,Su 15:00-17:00 (seasonal variations apply)

   Price

   UNKNOWN_NEEDS_MANUAL

   Website

   heimatmuseum-davos.ch ↗

   Location

   Davos Local History Museum on Google Maps ↗

   30 min walk to next stop

5. 5

   Schatzalp

   

   From the Schatzalp funicular station in Davos Platz, a short ride pulls you up to the shelf at 1,900m and the grand hotel that Thomas Mann turned into fiction. The Schatzalp opened in 1900 as a luxury sanatorium and became the 'Berghof' of 'The Magic Mountain' (1924), the closed mountain world where Mann's characters lose track of time. The Belle-Époque facade and Art Nouveau interiors survive, and the terrace gives a clean panorama back over Davos in its valley. This is the climax of the walk and worth lingering: have a coffee or lunch on the terrace and read a page of Mann if you brought it. The funicular runs in summer (roughly late June to early September) and the winter season. Standard cable-car fare runs about CHF 40 to 45 round trip, but with a Davos guest card it drops to around CHF 13, so ask your hotel for the card before you go up. The garden is a five-minute walk along the shelf.

   Hours

   Jun 27 - Sep 6 + winter season

   Price

   Cable car ~CHF 40-45; CHF 13 with guest card

   Website

   davosklostersmountains.ch ↗

   Location

   Schatzalp on Google Maps ↗

   6 min walk to next stop

6. 6

   Alpinum Schatzalp Botanical Garden

   

   A level path from the hotel leads to the Alpinum, Europe's highest alpine botanical garden at 1,900m. It is always open and free, no gate, no ticket. Over 5,000 alpine plant species grow here on the terraced slope, gathered from mountain ranges around the world and arranged so that things you would normally have to climb for hours to see are laid out at eye level. Late June through August is peak bloom, when the edelweiss, gentians and saxifrages are out and the colour is genuinely worth the trip up. Wear proper shoes, the garden paths are gravel and rock and they climb. Give it 30 to 45 minutes to wander the loops. Because it is free and shares the funicular with the hotel, there is no reason to skip it once you are up here. When you are done, take the funicular back down to Davos Platz and walk to the small museum that explains why any of this exists.

   Location

   Alpinum Schatzalp Botanical Garden on Google Maps ↗

   15 min walk to next stop

7. 7

   Medical Museum Davos

   Back down in Davos Platz, the Medical Museum is the small institution that ties the whole route together. It tells the story of high-altitude tuberculosis treatment and Davos's role from roughly 1865 to 1950 as the world capital of TB cures, the real medical history that fed directly into Thomas Mann's 'The Magic Mountain' in 1924. After the Kirchner paintings, the Schatzalp hotel and the rest cure in the Kurpark, this is where the pieces click: why patients came, what the sanatoria actually did, and why a remote valley filled with the dying and then the famous. The catch is the opening window. It is open only Tuesday and Thursday, 17:00 to 19:00, so most weekend visitors will find the door closed and should treat it as a planned-ahead stop or an exterior note. Check the website (medizinmuseum-davos.com) for the current admission price before you go. From here it is a short walk back along the Promenade to where you started.

   Hours

   Tu,Th 17:00-19:00

   Price

   UNKNOWN_NEEDS_MANUAL

   Website

   medizinmuseum-davos.com ↗

   Location

   Medical Museum Davos on Google Maps ↗

   8 min walk back to start

8. 8

   Davos Weekly Market

   The loop closes where it opened, back on the Promenade in Davos Platz. By now the Saturday market has likely packed up, but ending here on foot lets you read the town differently than you did at the start. You arrived knowing Davos as a ski resort or a conference name. You leave understanding it as a place built around lungs, altitude and a long literary shadow. This is the moment to eat that Bündnerfleisch you bought hours ago, or to settle into one of the Promenade cafés for a proper meal. The market itself is free and open access, morning only, so if you want to repeat it, come back next Saturday before midday. The Promenade is flat and easy underfoot here, a good place to end tired legs. If the funicular timing or museum hours pushed your day around, this central axis is where everything reconnects.

   Location

   Davos Weekly Market on Google Maps ↗

Self-Guided Tour vs. Group Tour in Davos

Self-guided is the right call in Davos, and not a close one. The two free outdoor highlights, the Kurpark and the Alpinum botanical garden, cost nothing and need no commentary beyond context. The museums are small, self-explained and cheap: CHF 15 for the Kirchner, with the local history and medical museums priced low (check their sites for current figures). The only real cost is the Schatzalp funicular, and the trick there is the Davos guest card, which cuts the round trip from about CHF 40-45 to roughly CHF 13. Organised guided walking tours of the village are rare and seasonal, and given how legible the town is along its single Promenade axis, you would be paying a premium for navigation you do not need. Put the funicular saving toward lunch on the Schatzalp terrace instead. Where a guide would add value is the storytelling, the Mann and Kirchner and TB threads that connect the stops, and that is exactly the layer you can carry in your pocket.

How Long Does This Davos Tour Take?

The full loop is about 11.5km with roughly 4 hours of walking, but realistically block out 6 to 7 hours for the whole day once you factor in the funicular, the museums and a terrace lunch. The single longest stretches are the Promenade walks between Davos Platz and Davos Dorf (allow 20-30 minutes each way), so wear comfortable shoes. Spend your time where it counts: 45 minutes to an hour in the Kirchner Museum, and at least 90 minutes up on the Schatzalp shelf split between the hotel terrace and the Alpinum garden. The best break is lunch on the Schatzalp terrace at 1,900m, where the panorama over Davos is the reward for the whole climb. If you need a free rest mid-walk, the benches by the Brunnen in the Kurpark are the spot. Watch the museum windows closely: the local history museum (Tu/We/Su 15:00-17:00) and the Medical Museum (Tu/Th 17:00-19:00) have narrow hours that will dictate your timing more than the walking does.

Tips for Walking in Davos

• Do the walk on a Saturday morning so the weekly market is actually running on the Promenade. It packs up by midday, so start before 11:00.
• Ask your hotel for a Davos guest card before going up Schatzalp. It cuts the funicular round trip from about CHF 40-45 down to roughly CHF 13.
• Wear proper walking shoes, not town flats. Promenade stretches are flat, but the Alpinum garden paths at 1,900m are gravel and rock and they climb.
• Restrooms: the cleanest reliable option is inside the Kirchner Museum (with your CHF 15 ticket); up top, use the Schatzalp hotel facilities.
• Buy Bündnerfleisch at the market to eat later, or have lunch on the Schatzalp terrace at 1,900m for the best view-to-price ratio of the day.
• Best photo: from the Schatzalp hotel terrace facing south-east over the valley, late morning, with Davos laid out below and the far ridges lit.
• Plan around the museum hours, not the walking. The Heimatmuseum (Tu/We/Su 15:00-17:00) and Medical Museum (Tu/Th 17:00-19:00) open in narrow windows only.

Common Questions