Schilthorn and Piz Gloria: the Summit, the Cableway and the James Bond Story

The Summit and the Ride Up

The Schilthorn stands at 2,970 m above Mürren on the west wall of the Lauterbrunnen valley. The aerial cableway starts on the valley floor at Stechelberg, which is the end of the road and the end of the Postbus route, and climbs in four stages: Gimmelwald at 1,364 m, the car-free village of Mürren at 1,638 m, the Birg mid-station, and finally the summit. The whole ride takes about 30 minutes.

The operator brands the view from the top "the Swiss Skyline": the panorama shows the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau across the valley. Those three peaks face you directly, which is why the summit platform is as much a viewpoint as the restaurant itself.

One engineering claim is worth understanding correctly. The operator states that with a gradient of 159.4%, the new aerial cableway between Stechelberg and Mürren is the steepest cable car in the world. That claim applies to the Stechelberg-Mürren section alone, not to the whole line to the summit, so do not expect the entire ride to feel like a near-vertical climb. The steepest part is the first stage off the valley floor.

Practical line: the valley station is in Stechelberg, and the Postbus gets you there from Lauterbrunnen. Ascents run every hour at xx:25 and xx:55, so time your arrival at the valley station around that clock rather than turning up mid-slot and waiting.

Piz Gloria, the Revolving Restaurant

Piz Gloria is the circular restaurant on the summit, designed by the Bernese architect Konrad Wolf and opened in 1969. It claims to be the world's first revolving restaurant, though that claim has a rival: Wikipedia notes that the Eye of the Needle in Seattle opened earlier, in 1962. The alpine site was difficult enough that the building was assembled from prefabricated parts, and the outer skin of the circular upper floor is made of aluminium-clad wooden panels.

The whole upper floor turns, so every table gets the full panorama over a meal. How long one rotation takes is stated two ways by two sources: the operator's own schilthorn.swiss says the restaurant "rotates around its own axis in 45 minutes", while Wikipedia, describing the rotating mechanism of a 12 m diameter core with a 3.0 m annulus, says it takes "approximately an hour". We report both rather than picking one. Either way, you do not need to move seats to see the whole skyline.

In 1990 the restaurant was enlarged to seat about 400 diners. Practical line: if you want a table with a clear view while the floor turns, arrive early or outside the main lunch push, because several hundred seats fill quickly when the weather is good and the cable cars are running full.

The James Bond Story

The name Piz Gloria comes from Ian Fleming's 1963 novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service, in which it is the mountain lair of the villain Blofeld. In the novel the lair is fictionally placed near St Moritz, even though the real restaurant stands in the Bernese Oberland.

The film connection is real and financial, not just cosmetic. The film production found the restaurant partly built and helped finance its completion in exchange for exclusive filming rights. The film was released in 1969, the same year the restaurant opened, so the Bond story and the building's story are the same story.

Today the Bond theme continues on two floors. A James Bond exhibition sits on the lower floor of the restaurant, and a larger exhibition, the 007 Walk of Fame, opened in July 2015 with the actor George Lazenby and film crew members present at the launch. Both are included in your cableway ticket, so there is nothing extra to buy once you are up.

Practical line: if Bond is the reason you are coming, allow time on the lower floor and in the Walk of Fame before or after lunch, because most visitors rush both on their way to the viewing platform.

Choosing Your Visit Length

The cableway ride itself takes about 30 minutes up from Stechelberg, and the ticket listing for a summit visit allows 2-5 hours. Those two figures are your anchors. Everything else depends on how much you add: the Birg walks on the way down, lunch in the revolving restaurant, or a stop in Mürren. The table below sets out three realistic routings against the anchor figures.

The fare structure rewards a short start time in one way: the brunch fare applies to departures by 08:51 and costs US$151.90 (CHF 125) from Stechelberg or US$128.80 (CHF 106) from Mürren, so an early start with breakfast at the top is a recognised product, not a hack.

Three Routings Compared

Use these three routings to size your day. All start from the valley, and the middle one is what most first-time visitors actually do.

The Details Behind the Claim

These five points come straight from the operator's own pages and from Wikipedia's article on Piz Gloria. Each one changes how you might plan or budget a visit.

- Piz Gloria claims to be the world's first revolving restaurant, but Wikipedia notes that the Eye of the Needle in Seattle opened earlier, in 1962. The claim survives as a claim, not a settled fact. - How long the restaurant takes to rotate is stated differently by two sources. The operator's schilthorn.swiss says it "rotates around its own axis in 45 minutes", while Wikipedia, describing the mechanism of a 12 m diameter core with a 3.0 m annulus, says "approximately an hour". Plan for somewhere between the two. - In Fleming's 1963 novel, Blofeld's lair is fictionally placed near St Moritz, in the Graubünden Alps. The real Piz Gloria stands in the Bernese Oberland, above the Lauterbrunnen valley, which is where the film was shot. - The "world's steepest cable car" claim, at a gradient of 159.4%, applies only to the new aerial cableway between Stechelberg and Mürren. It is a claim about one section, not about the line to the summit. - The restaurant you see today is bigger than the one that opened in 1969. It was enlarged in 1990 to seat about 400 diners, which is why lunchtime feels busy even on a wide circular floor.

Building a Clear-Weather Day Around the Summit

The Schilthorn rewards a clear sky more than any other single sight in the valley, so it should anchor your best-weather day. A workable shape: an early ascent from Stechelberg, the summit and Piz Gloria while the morning light is on the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the Thrill Walk and Skyline Walk at Birg on the way down, then the afternoon in Mürren or Gimmelwald before the last lift to the valley floor. That fills a day without rushing, and our one-day Lauterbrunnen itinerary shows where the morning fits around the waterfalls if you have only one day in total.

If the forecast is clear on two days and you are deciding between this and the other big summit, the choice is between a revolving restaurant with a Bond story and a railway station inside the mountains. We compare the two directly on Schilthorn or Jungfraujoch, including the fare difference, so you can commit one clear morning to each rather than guessing.