Liechtenstein's lakes, few and nearly all man-made

Plenty of people search for Liechtenstein’s lakes expecting something like Switzerland or Austria, and the short answer is that there are hardly any. This is a country of rivers, canals and mountains, and you can count its still waters on your fingers. The few there are come with odd stories, though, and one of them, the Gampriner Seelein, was literally born from a disaster.

A country of rivers, not lakes

The Historisches Lexikon puts it plainly, Liechtenstein’s waters are mostly flowing. The country drains through three systems, the inland canal, with a 117 km² catchment, the Samina, which gathers 50 km² of mountains and reaches the Rhine via Austria, and the Spiersbach, with 11 km² in the north. Above them all is the Rhine, the border with Switzerland, which I cover on the Rhine in Liechtenstein.

There used to be plenty of pools and ponds in the Rhine meadows, but they vanished from the mid-19th century as the river was tamed and the land farmed and built on. The last pond on the valley floor, near Gamprin, dried up in 1973. According to the Lexikon, almost every pond today is man-made, apart from the Gampriner Seelein and a few mountain tarns such as the Sass-See.

What is the largest lake in Liechtenstein?

It depends what you call a lake. If you mean water that formed on its own, the record goes to the Gampriner Seelein in Gamprin, at 1.37 hectares. It’s the child of the great flood of 1927, when the Rhine burst out and the current gouged a hollow in the plain just where the hill comes closest to the river. It was protected in 1961, and by the late 1970s it was at risk of drying up because the riverbed and the groundwater had dropped, so in 1979-80 it was cleaned out and given a supply from the inland canal. In 1980 noble crayfish, a species the country had lost in the early 20th century, were released there again, and they’ve since spread along the streams as far as the Ruggeller Riet. From October to April great egrets are easy to spot.

Count man-made waters and the largest are the ponds at Hälos in Triesen, 3.56 hectares and protected as a reserve, and the Steg reservoir, 3.2 hectares, built to generate power. The Schwabbrünnen-Äscher habitat, 0.4 hectares, is man-made too, as are the ponds beside the old textile mills in Vaduz and Triesen.

Steg, the most photogenic

If I had to choose one lake for looks, it would be the Steg reservoir. It sits in the high Samina valley, ringed by forest with peaks behind, and it’s the picture I’d take home from the country’s mountains. I describe it and its setting on the Samina valley and on the page for Steg. I haven’t found anything official about swimming in it, so treat it as a place to look rather than dive in.

Where to swim in a lake

For a swim, I’d head to the Grossabünt in Gamprin, a short walk from the Seelein. It’s a lake made on purpose for bathing, but without chlorine, because the water comes up from underground at drinking quality and cleans itself by flowing through a planted pond. The bathing area tops 3,500 m², with a deep part for jumping off a rock and a shallow one for little ones. The council provides no supervision and only lets you swim in daylight. To weigh it against the paying pools, all four are on swimming pools in Liechtenstein.

One practical warning from the municipality that applies to any natural lake. Waterbirds sometimes bring in tiny larvae that can cause itchy rashes on sensitive skin, so they ask you not to feed the ducks, to shower before going in and to towel off properly afterwards. In autumn the lake is also drained for cleaning, so don’t count on it outside summer.

Ponds with a past

A couple of oddities I enjoy. Vaduz Castle had two ponds fed by a pipe from the Erbli stream. The small one supplied the lord’s buildings and fountains, and the large one, the Lexikon says, served from around 1840 as a swimming pool for the country’s military contingent. And Mauren had a pond, gone by the 17th century, that was probably used for processing flax.

Today, in Vaduz, the Haberfeld nature park west of the Giessen has ponds, marshy patches and pools with some unusual plants and wildlife, a few minutes from the centre. It’s the easiest still-water outing if you don’t leave the capital.