Planken, Liechtenstein's smallest community on its mountain terrace

Planken is a village most travellers only ever see from below, clinging to the hillside above Schaan. To me it’s among the finest gateways to the country’s mountains, because within an hour and a half you’re at a hut with a terrace, without having touched a car. Here’s what it is, what its legend says and how I’d spend my time there.

The municipality with the fewest residents

On 31 December 2025 Planken had 499 residents, the lowest figure of the eleven municipalities. At 5.3 km² it’s the second smallest by area, after Schellenberg. And, oddly enough, it grew fastest of all in 2025, by 1.6% on the Office of Statistics’ provisional figures.

The village sits at 786 m on a terrace at the foot of the Three Sisters massif, north-east of Schaan. According to the Historisches Lexikon its name comes from the Latin planca or Romansh plaunca, a grassy slope, and it first appears on 23 April 1361. The route to the Sarojasattel, a 1,628 m pass into Austria’s Walgau, ran through here and mattered in wartime.

A Walser village?

Oral tradition says Planken was settled by Walser people from Triesenberg, first on scattered farms higher up at Saroja, Gafadura, Rütti and Oberplanken. The Lexikon is blunt about it, since this isn’t proven, though one place name at Gafadura is Walser. I like that the source says so plainly, which is why I tell it as tradition.

Other details sum up the scale of the place. Planken still belongs to Schaan parish, only got its own cemetery in 2009, and its volunteer fire brigade, founded in 1962, was the last one set up in the country. St Joseph’s chapel, built in 1767 and 1768 and listed since 1951, received three neo-baroque altars in 1929, a gift from Prince Franz I.

What is there to do in Planken? Walk up to Gafadura

My answer is simple. The council website says the Gafadura hut, at 1,428 m, is an hour and a half up a zigzag gravel track, easy even with children, or 30 to 45 minutes on the woodland paths. At the top there’s a terrace with what the council itself calls dreamlike views, plus food, drink and beds. One important warning from the Alpine Club, which owns the hut, is that it takes cash only, in Swiss francs or euros.

If your legs are up to it, keep going. The council says the short climb from Gafadura to the Sarojasattel is rewarded with views of the Walgau and the Walserkamm in Austria. And for people who know what they’re doing, there’s a route around and over the Three Sisters and along the high path to Gaflei which, the same website warns, needs sure feet and a head for heights. That’s Fürstensteig and Three Sisters territory, and I wouldn’t improvise it.

The legend you can see from anywhere

The three peaks that tower over Planken come with a story, and the council publishes it. Three sisters climbed to the alp to pick berries on the Virgin’s feast day while the church bells rang below. At dusk a woman asked them for a few berries for a poor child, and they refused. She was the Virgin, and she turned them to stone for ever. They’ve been the Three Sisters ever since, and it’s a legend best told with the peaks right in front of you.

Oberplanken and a mountain on the move

Above the village lies Oberplanken, a meadow ringed by forest at 960 m, reachable only by a footpath until the road opened in 1949. In 1974 the council banned holiday chalets there, and it shows. The mountain isn’t entirely still either. The Lexikon records that on 8 May 1992 an earthquake broke a large block of rock off the Matona, below Gafadura.

Getting there and where to stay

LIEmobil line 26 links Schaan with Planken, and the council gives the Schulhaus Planken stop as the start of the signed path to Gafadura. By car there’s parking at the village entrance, the Gemeindezentrum and the school. If you’re walking across the country, stage 3 of the Liechtenstein Trail passes through Planken with views of the Three Sisters on its way to Nendeln. For a bed, I’d look in Schaan or, if you want to wake up in the mountains, at Gafadura’s 14 places.