Is Liechtenstein a country or part of Switzerland?

It’s a fair question. Liechtenstein pays in Swiss francs, has no customs post with Switzerland, speaks German and fits inside a single valley, so plenty of people assume it’s a canton or a corner of Austria. It isn’t. It’s a sovereign state with a prince, a parliament, a constitution and a seat at the UN, and the reason it exists at all strikes me as one of the oddest stories in Europe. Its size also feeds the myth that you can book it like a cottage, which I look into in renting Liechtenstein.

A country bought for a vote

The Liechtensteins were an Austrian noble family, named after a castle south of Vienna, but they owned no land held directly from the emperor. That kept them off the princes’ bench of the Reichstag, the Imperial Diet, and out of the top tier of the Empire’s aristocracy. The Princely House tells the story in just those terms on its own website.

The answer was to go shopping. Prince Johann Adam Andreas bought the lordship of Schellenberg in 1699 and the county of Vaduz in 1712, two small territories answerable only to the emperor. In 1719 Charles VI merged them and raised them to an imperial principality bearing the family name. That’s why the country is named after an Austrian castle rather than anywhere within its own borders. The rest of the timeline is in the history of Liechtenstein.

Sovereignty came later, almost by accident. In 1806 Napoleon brought the principality into the Confederation of the Rhine, which the Princely House treats as the cornerstone of its independence. The German Confederation followed in 1815, and in the 20th century came the 1921 constitution that is still in force. How all of that translates into a trip, with the villages, the mountains and the castles, is in my Liechtenstein travel guide.

Is Liechtenstein part of Switzerland?

No. What it shares with Switzerland is a customs union and a currency. The treaty was signed on 29 March 1923 and took effect on 1 January 1924, bringing the Swiss franc with it as the official currency. It replaced the customs union Liechtenstein had had with Austria since 1852, which it ended in 1919 after the First World War. A currency treaty followed in 1980.

In practice you cross the Rhine without seeing a customs officer and pay the same prices on both banks. But Switzerland is about 260 times bigger, and the two have separate governments, separate laws and separate relationships with Europe. The clearest example is the European Economic Area. Switzerland voted it down in 1992, while Liechtenstein joined in 1995 after a second referendum with 55.9% in favour. I cover that on Liechtenstein, the EU and Schengen.

Austria, Germany and the confusion over neighbours

Liechtenstein has just two neighbours. Switzerland lies to the west and south, with 41.3 km of border, and Austria to the north and east, with 36.6 km. It doesn’t touch Germany, even though German is the official language and it belonged to the Confederation of the Rhine and the German Confederation in the 19th century. Its exact position, with a plan of the country, is on the map of Liechtenstein.

The ties with Austria were very close until 1919, with a shared customs area from 1852. No reigning prince lived in the country until 1938, when Franz Josef II moved into Vaduz Castle. Today the Austrian border is the one with customs, because of the union with Switzerland, even though all three countries are in Schengen.

What makes it a state today

It has a head of state, Prince Hans-Adam II, with his son Alois acting as regent since 2004. It has a 25-seat parliament, a five-member government and its own courts in Vaduz. It joined the Council of Europe in 1978, the UN in 1990 and the International Monetary Fund in 2024. How power is shared between the Prince and the people is explained on Liechtenstein’s political system.

What it doesn’t have is an army, gone since 1868, an airport or a currency of its own. None of that diminishes it in my eyes. It’s simply how a country of 41,228 people has found a way to work without duplicating what its neighbour already offers.

My favourite constitutional quirk

Article 4 of the constitution gives each of the eleven municipalities the right to leave the state if a majority of its voters so decide. I can’t think of another European country that puts that in writing. I mention it not because it’s likely to happen, but because it says a lot about how Liechtenstein sees itself, as a union of villages rather than a state built from the top down. It’s also why it sits on my list of Liechtenstein facts.