Davos

Davos was first mentioned in 1213 as Tavaus, a name probably meaning the people of, or the land below, the ravines that overlook the town. Rhaeto-Romans settled the valley in the High Middle Ages, and from about 1280 the barons of Vaz let German-speaking Walser colonists settle with broad rights of self-government. In 1289 the people of Davos won freedom from personal taxes, and the valley became the largest Walser settlement in eastern Switzerland. In 1436 the League of the Ten Jurisdictions was founded here, one of the three leagues that later formed Graubünden.

From the mid-19th century, encouraged by the doctor Alexander Spengler, Davos became a health resort for tuberculosis patients, who came for a high-valley climate that doctors recommended for lung disease. Robert Louis Stevenson wintered here in 1880, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about skiing in Davos in 1899, and a Davos sanatorium inspired the Berghof of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. The painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner arrived as a patient in 1917 and spent the rest of his life here. The town's natural ice also made it a centre of speed skating and figure skating.

During the Second World War, in which Switzerland stayed neutral, Davos was a centre of Nazi activity in Switzerland, with Nazi salutes and flags common in its German-led sanatoria and schools; the assassination of the Swiss Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff here in 1936 strained relations with Germany. In 2022 the town commissioned a study of this past. After the sanatorium era Davos became a ski resort, and since 1971 it has hosted the World Economic Forum.

Davos is a German-speaking town with deep Walser roots: long-established families still speak a dialect atypical of Graubünden and closer to that of Raron in the Valais. The municipality keeps its old institutions, with a Landammann at its head and a Grand Country Council of 17 members.

Its cultural life still reflects the cure years. The Kirchner Museum, opened in 1992 in a building by Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer, holds the world's largest collection of the painter's work, and the museum, the forest cemetery, the Grosses Jenatschhaus and the town archives are among its seven heritage sites of national significance. Writers and artists associated with the town include Stevenson, Mann and Klabund, and the artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp was born here. Each summer young musicians from around the world perform in the Davos Festival, and in July and August the Davos sounds good jazz festival and the davos@promenade street festival are held.

Sport runs through local life. HC Davos plays in the top Swiss ice hockey league, and its Spengler Cup, first played in 1923, is a fixture of the Christmas holidays. Davos has one of Europe's largest natural ice rinks, staged the only European Bandy Championship in 1913, and its research institutes, from trauma surgery to allergy, radiation and avalanche research, make it a scientific town as well.

About 10,800 people lived in Davos in 2020, mostly in the twin settlements of Davos Dorf and Davos Platz, with the rest spread through the villages and hamlets of a municipality covering most of the Landwasser valley. Households averaged about two people in 2014.

Davos is a regional centre as well as a resort. In 2014 about 8,900 people worked in the municipality, more than 7,600 of them in services: hotels, shops, the ski areas, clinics and research institutes such as the AO Foundation, the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research, the World Radiation Center and the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research.

The year has fixed peaks: the Spengler Cup at the end of December, the World Economic Forum in January, when the town fills with delegates, and the ski weeks of February and March. Summer brings walkers, cyclists and musicians, and the quieter seasons belong to residents. Buses along the Promenade and the Rhaetian Railway carry everyday traffic.

Davos eats the food of Graubünden. Capuns are pieces of Spätzle dough mixed with dried meat such as Bündnerfleisch or salsiz sausage, rolled in chard leaves, boiled in a mixture of bouillon, milk and water and served under grated cheese. Capuns are made above all in the eastern part of the canton. Bündnerfleisch, also known as Bindenfleisch, Grisons meat or viande des Grisons, is meat air-dried in Graubünden, and salsiz are the canton's small dried sausages.

The Bündner Nusstorte, also called the Engadiner Nusstorte, is a shortcrust tart filled with caramelised nuts, usually walnuts; the modern filled version was invented in the 1920s and became widely available in the 1960s. It is a traditional sweet of the whole canton.

Restaurants and cafés line the Promenade, and the ski areas have mountain restaurants on their slopes. In the village of Monstein, down the valley, a small brewery describes itself as the highest in Europe and offers guided tours, tastings and classes in brewing, with beer sold direct from the brewery once a week.