What should a first-time traveler see in Switzerland beyond the obvious highlights?

Switzerland's reputation rests on scenery, which is why its cultural designations get overlooked. St Gall and Müstair were inscribed in the same year as the Old City of Berne — 1983, the country's first entries on the list — and the three of them sit in three different linguistic regions. Berne is the federal capital and the one most visitors skip in favor of Zurich or Geneva.

Monte San Giorgio, inscribed in 2003, is in Italian-speaking Ticino and is known for its Triassic marine fossil beds rather than for the view from its summit.

The strangest entry on the Swiss list is the Rhaetian Railway in the Albula / Bernina Landscapes, inscribed in 2008. The property is a working railway. You do not visit it from a platform; you ride it. For a traveler on a Swiss Travel Pass, the premium panoramic trains are included — though seat reservation fees and surcharges apply on top — which makes the inscribed route unusually easy to fold into a normal journey rather than treating it as an excursion.

And if museums are the plan, the pass carries free admission to more than 500 museums, which is a different kind of argument for inland Switzerland. The small industrial and watchmaking towns of the Jura have the museums; the lake resorts have the views.

La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle were inscribed for watchmaking town planning — the layout itself, not the buildings standing on it. The two towns were rebuilt to serve the workshop economy, which means the heritage you are looking at is the street grid. It is one of the few properties anywhere where the right way to see it is to walk the plan, and it explains why a conventional sightseeing list of the two towns reads as thin: the monument is the map.

• Day one — Start east. St Gall's abbey precinct is the oldest Swiss entry on the list and sits on the main rail corridor rather than off it.
• Day two — Cross to Graubünden and ride the Albula and Bernina alignment as a journey rather than a day trip, ending somewhere you actually want to sleep.
• Day three — Drop into the Jura for La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle, where the pass's museum admissions do the most work.

US citizens need a passport valid for at least 6 months beyond their planned departure from the Schengen area, with at least 1 blank page for stamps — that published requirement is stricter than the 3 months quoted as the Schengen minimum elsewhere, so plan to the longer figure. Müstair sits in a remote valley in the far southeast and St Gall in the far northeast, so any itinerary taking both is a cross-country trip, not a loop. And the panoramic trains that make the Rhaetian Railway easy still require reservations, which sell out in summer regardless of what pass you hold.

Pair this with the Swiss trip-planning question for the arithmetic on rail passes and timing; the food answer in this chapter covers which regions carry which protected specialities.