Is one country more beautiful than another?
Quora posters have similar questions, but one seemed to imply that s/he thought Switzerland was more beautiful than any other country in the world. Can one really say one country is more beautiful?
Read on to find out what features make a country beautiful. Decide which country you think is the most beautiful.
Author & Photographer: George Mitchell
Our recommendations are not influenced by affiliate links – we have none. Our advice is derived from our personal experience based on travelling for three years around the world. We are avid hikers, nature lovers and photographers (all photos are my own).
Is Switzerland More Beautiful?
We lived in Europe for 7 years and loved Switzerland. We have also lived and travelled extensively in Canada, the United States, Japan, and New Zealand. Thanks to all these experiences, here are our thoughts about this question.
Is It Travel Advertising?
Why do people feel Switzerland is beautiful? Is it because of travel advertising? Is it because you prefer mountain scenery in a compact country? Do you associate the Alps solely with Switzerland? The country with the largest percentage of the Alps is… Austria.
No, the above photo is not in Switzerland, despite the alpenhorn performance! The country with the second-largest percentage of the Alps is Italy! They happened to be called the Dolomites (Dolomiti), but they are still the Alps. With an area of 52 km², Alpe di Siusi is the largest high-altitude Alp (alpine meadow) in Europe. It is preserved like a national park — no cars (except for the locals), minimal development, great hiking, and spectacular karst scenery. It is well known to Europeans.
Quaint Villages
Switzerland is very civilized with manicured Alps. The word Alp may derive from high mountain pastures near treeline, where cows and sheep are taken to graze during the summer months. Cute villages dot the landscape.
Painted and carved wood chalets adorned with flowers are the quintessential Switzerland. That is what makes it picture-postcard quaint.
Swiss Environment
The strong desire for cleanliness and strict protection of the environment are other unique features of Switzerland. We remember driving through the countryside, and there was a stoppage on the highway. Every driver turned their car off to minimize pollution! It’s the law.
Wide Open Views
The Swiss Alps have beautiful mountain vistas, gorgeous glaciers, and glacial green lakes and rivers. To get away from any visible human development, you have to hike to see beautiful views like Lake. Oberhornsee above.
What we really love about Switzerland is the wide open views you can see, whether you are in the villages, at the top of the cable cars, or on glorious hikes.
This is in part a result of deforestation to provide pasture land for farming. The result is that you can see stunning views in every direction. How can you not enjoy it?
What we really love about New Zealand is the wide open views. Like Switzerland, this is in part a result of deforestation to provide pasture land for farming. The result is that driving from A to B is just as exciting as getting to destination B.
Unfair Comparison
It is difficult to compare a tiny country to either Canada or the USA. All of Western Europe can fit into Eastern Canada! Needless to say, large countries cannot be totally mountainous or totally scenic.
Is There a Fairer Comparison?
A Fairer Comparison
A fairer comparison would be Switzerland and the Rocky Mountains. The seven contiguous parks of the Canadian Rockies are 57% of the size of Switzerland. But the Rockies have only three towns (villages) with 13,000 people. The rest of the Canadian Rockies is undeveloped wilderness. By contrast, Switzerland has 8.7 million people with lots of traffic and much less true wilderness.
What Do Travellers Think?
According to the traveller-based Rough Guides survey, New Zealand, Italy, Canada and Switzerland are the most beautiful countries in the world. Generally, I have no problem with the top four. I would question why Great Britain was ranked fifth and Japan was ranked twentieth. Japan should rank higher, but this reflects that fewer Anglophone tourists travel to Japan.
Diversity of Beauty
We propose looking at Diversity of Beauty as a more objective criterion for evaluating countries.
Diversity of Natural Beauty
Switzerland offers primarily two types of beauty: alpine mountains and quaint villages. Nor does Switzerland have the massive rivers and forest areas of North America.
I love mountains also. Corinne loves coastal scenery. If you love nature, then you love all types of geography. The United States offers coastal scenery, desert scenery, geothermal scenery, and volcanic scenery. We both really love the red rock formations, hoodoos, and canyons of the Southwest USA.
New Zealand is a combination of the uncommercialized Canadian Rockies with volcanoes and thermal areas that rival Yellowstone NP, plus turquoise waters surrounding rugged coastlines. Well, it is the South Pacific.
Wilderness vs Highly Developed
Swiss Wilderness
Switzerland has 20 mostly small regional parks, covering an area of 570 sq km or a mere 1.4% of the area of Switzerland. Most of the alpine land is used for farms, villages, ski resorts, roads, towns, and tourism. With 8.7 million people and lots of traffic, there is not much true wilderness. Switzerland is expensive, overhyped, and commercialized.
NZ Wilderness
National and Regional Parks cover 11.3% of the area of NZ. Yes, there is a lot of deforestation in NZ. This gives it open views. Currently, NZ is a very pastoral country with minimal commercialization. It is developed in terms of farming, but that adds to the beauty rather than detracts.
Japanese Wilderness
Japan has 404 national and regional parks covering an area of 22,000 sq km or 5.8% of the area of Japan. It offers about 27,000 km of long-distance hiking trails. Japan is nine times the size of Switzerland.
Japanese Cultural Beauty
What is unique about Japan is its architectural, historical, and cultural beauty. Preserving natural surroundings is a major tenet of Shintoism and Japanese culture. The Japanese revere their parks and natural areas. Like Switzerland, Japan is exceptionally clean and tidy.
Canadian Wilderness
From Lake Louise village to the town of Jasper, the Icefields Parkway provides 232 km (144 mi) of easy access to rugged Rockies, gorgeous glaciers and turquoise lakes — all from the luxury of your car.
There are not many roads in North America (or the world) that are this spectacular for this long a distance with minimal human development and commercialization. The Icefields Parkway is THE Quintessential Road Trip of Canada, if not North America. Few countries have the wealth of large, spectacular turquoise lakes and glaciers that can be found along the Icefields Parkway and elsewhere.
We took a Swiss friend hiking to Canada’s Glacier National Park in British Columbia (BC). A young NJ hiker asked to come along with us as we climbed Abbot Ridge. This is our favourite hike in all of North America. BTW, BC’s Glacier NP is not in the Rockies. It is in the Selkirk and Purcell Ranges to the west of the Rockies.
When we got to the top, our NJ hiker said he had been to the Alps and the Himalayas, but he comes every summer to the Canadian Rockies. Then he added they are way better than the Alps, which irked our patriotic Swiss friend. He explained that in the Alps, you get to the top and all you see are villages or other human development. On Abbott Ridge, we had a 360º view and all we saw were more mountains, glaciers and rivers. That also sums up the difference between Switzerland and North America.
Final Comments
Beauty is subjective. If I showed you four pictures just of mountains from each country, you probably could not tell which country they were in. The Swiss mountain scenery is not that different from the Rockies or New Zealand’s Southern Alps scenery. It’s a draw. They are all fantastic.
- The quaint villages and wide open views make Switzerland unique.
- The United States offers the greatest diversity of types of beauty — coastal scenery, desert scenery, geothermal scenery, and volcanic scenery. It provides the highest highway infrastructure as well as the highest traffic.
- Japan offers the greatest diversity of beauty — coastal, geothermal, alpine, volcanic, architectural, historical, and cultural.
- New Zealand offers a similar diversity of beauty but with less urbanization and commercialization, and less highway infrastructure.
- Canada offers the greatest wilderness and the least commercialization. On the other hand, they provide enough highways and infrastructure so that you can go out and hike, ski, or sightsee.
Surprising Fact for Today
Japan has 440 active and inactive volcanoes. It has 10% of the world’s active volcanoes! For more surprising facts, read Unlock Japan: Insider Tips & FAQs.
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