Brunngasse in Brienz named one of the world's most beautiful streets
By Jan de Boer
From picture-postcard villages and snow-capped mountains to crystal blue lakes and rivers, to say Switzerland is a pretty country would be an understatement. Now, a street in the chocolate box town of Brienz has been named one of the most beautiful in the world by Architectural Digest.
Most beautiful streets in the world by Architectural Digest
In the ranking, American magazine Architectural Digest (AD) wrote that stunning streets and alleyways can be found across the world and serve to remind us that “good, beautiful things are all around us - so long as we take the time to find them”. To help fill the bucket lists of travellers worldwide, the magazine collated 71 of the world’s most beautiful streets.
To earn a place on the list, a street had to showcase vibrance and colour, be historically significant, have stunning natural features, possess captivating architecture or have interesting restaurants or shops. This means that the list is very diverse, from the cherry blossoms of a street in Bonn to the Champs-Élysées in Paris and Brouwersgracht in Amsterdam.
Chalet-lined Brunngasse in Brienz one of the world's prettiest streets
While Switzerland has more than its fair share of pretty streets, AD found Brunngasse in the lakeside town of Brienz, Canton Bern to be the most beautiful. The just-over-100-metre-long lane in the centre of the small town is lined with traditional 18th-century chalets and positioned with the Bernese Alps in the background.
Video: Sylvia Michel Photography / YouTube
With Brienz being known as a woodworking village, many of the buildings have ornate wood carvings on their facades - the lake promenade next to Brunngasse also has a selection of locally-made statues. For the AD, these factors more than earned the street’s place on the list alongside the likes of Zrinyi Utca Street in Budapest, the cobblestone alleys of Bruges, the hairpin-filled turns of Lombard Street in San Francisco and the famous Harry Potter-esque Shambles in York.
To see which other streets made the list, check out the AD website.
Thumb image credit: Alberto Garcia Guillen / Shutterstock.com
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Jan studied History at the University of York and Broadcast Journalism at the University of Sheffield. Though born in York, Jan has lived most of his life in Zurich and has worked as a journalist, writer and editor since 2016.
While he has plunged head-first back into life in Switzerland since returning to the country in 2020, he still enjoys a taste of home at pub quizzes and karaoke nights.Read more