Valais

No, though a good many itineraries treat it that way. Valais is one of Switzerland’s twenty-six cantons and it is a substantial place in its own right: the entire upper Rhône valley, thirteen districts, a capital at Sion, an agricultural valley floor under vines, and a whole southern border with Italy. The Matterhorn stands at the head of one side valley in the south of it, above Zermatt. That single peak is what brings most visitors, and there is nothing wrong with coming for it — but a trip that goes up the Mattertal and straight out again has seen one valley of a canton that has dozens, and has missed the glacier, the vineyards, the thermal water and the passes entirely.

Both French and German, and which one depends on how far up the valley you are. The lower and central canton — Martigny, Sion, Sierre — is French-speaking, and Sion is a thoroughly French-speaking capital. Somewhere around Sierre the line crosses, and the Upper Valais from Visp and Brig eastwards, including Zermatt and Saas-Fee, is German-speaking; what you will actually hear spoken there is Swiss German dialect rather than the standard German of a textbook. The canton is officially bilingual and signage reflects it. For a visitor none of this is an obstacle — English is used throughout the tourism trade in both halves — but it explains why the place names change character halfway along the valley.

It starts here. The Glacier Express connects Zermatt with St Moritz in Grisons by way of Andermatt, so its western terminus is in this canton and the first stretch of the journey runs down the Mattertal and up the Rhône valley before climbing east. It is a panoramic train rather than a fast one — it has been called the slowest express in the world by its own operators, which is the point of it — and it takes the better part of a day end to end. Seats are reserved and the service runs to a seasonal timetable with a maintenance break, so it is not available on every date of the year. If the whole run does not fit the itinerary, a shorter Valais stretch of the same line still gives you most of the scenery.

It is the longest glacier in the Alps, lying along the northern edge of this canton, and it forms the core of the UNESCO-inscribed Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch site. You reach it not from Zermatt but from the eastern end of the Rhône valley, taking a cable car from the valley floor up to one of the car-free terrace villages — Riederalp, Bettmeralp or Fiescheralp — and then walking or riding a further lift to a viewpoint above the ice. It is entirely accessible to an ordinary visitor in reasonable weather and it looks nothing like the sharp peaks people associate with Switzerland; it is a slow river of ice in a wide trough. Like almost every glacier it is retreating, so the walk out to a viewpoint gets longer over the years and current access is worth confirming.

A good deal of it does, and this is the single most useful thing to know before choosing dates. Alpine resorts here work two seasons, and in the weeks between them — broadly after the snow goes in spring and again through the late autumn — mountain lifts shut for maintenance, many hotels and restaurants close outright, and the higher walking paths are either still under snow or already back under it. Zermatt is one of the places that keeps some high-altitude access running year-round, which is exactly why it dominates the itineraries, but even there the choice of what is open narrows. The valley floor stays open and is lovely in both shoulder periods. If your dates fall in one of them, build the trip around the valley and treat any summit as a bonus rather than the plan.

Yes to both, and the southern crossings are part of what makes this canton what it is. Italy lies along the whole southern border and is reached by the Simplon — a road pass with a railway tunnel beneath it running down to Domodossola — or by the Great St Bernard, the ancient hospice route. France is west beyond the Chablais. Because Switzerland is inside the Schengen area there are no routine border controls on these crossings, so a single Schengen visa covers the journey. What does change is everything else: Switzerland is NOT in the European Union and does not use the euro, so you move from the Swiss franc to the euro at the border, mobile roaming arrangements differ, and the high passes themselves are closed by snow for a substantial part of the year even when the rail tunnel beneath is not.