Rotenboden, the Walser hamlet on the way to Gaflei

Rotenboden has no monument and no named viewpoint, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. It’s a hamlet on the Triesenberg slope that the Gaflei road runs through, and I’ve written it up because it shows so clearly how the Walser spread themselves across this mountainside.

Where it is and what it’s called

Rotenboden lies on the Rhine side of Triesenberg, where, according to the Historisches Lexikon, the Walser hamlets are scattered between 700 and 1,250 m. The Lexikon places it below Masescha, which sits to the east and higher up, on the way to Gaflei.

The name comes in two versions. Official maps say Rotenboden, while the Lexikon, which follows local speech, says Rotaboda. It’s the same story with Wangerberg, the Triesenberg hamlet above Triesen, which the Lexikon spells Wangerbärg, or with Steinort and Steinord, and I go through more examples on my page about Liechtenstein’s dialect. I use the map spelling because it’s the one you’ll see on signs.

More history than it lets on

Almost everything I know about Rotenboden comes from the Lexikon’s article on Triesenberg, because the hamlet doesn’t get one of its own. It crops up there more than once. In the 17th century the municipality was split into five «Viertel» for tax purposes, and Rotaboda was one of them, alongside Masescha, Lavadina, Zehentwis and Gartschind. On Johann Kolleffel’s map of 1756, which already shows hamlets where there had been scattered farms, it’s marked by name.

The church shaped daily life. Until 1768 Rotenboden, Fromahus, Erbi and Prufatscheng didn’t belong to Triesen parish like the rest of the village but to Schaan, so people walked all the way down there for Mass and to bury their dead. Even the tithe went elsewhere, with three quarters of Rotaboda’s and Prufatscheng’s paid to the court chaplaincy in Vaduz.

It also holds a small record. Triesenberg’s first recorded innkeeper was Johannes Hilbe in Rotaboda, documented from 1767, thirteen years before the one by the church in the centre. In the late 19th century the hamlet got its own cooperative dairy, from 1896, when the municipality gave up on every family making its own cheese. There were two more in the village, at Rietli from 1892 and at Steinort from 1912, so each part of the slope had one.

Fromahus, the hamlet between Rotenboden and Vaduz on the 1872 road, has its own footnote. According to the Lexikon it was the last part of the municipality to get electricity, in 1948, when Triesenberg had had power since 1921. That tells you how scattered these hamlets were and what it took to reach them.

The road that put it on the map

In 1872 a road opened from Vaduz to Gnalp via Fromahus and Rotenboden, one of those the Lexikon links to the arrival of tourism. Gnalp, higher up below the Kulm, was among the first Walser settlements on record, in 1355, and was lived in all year round until the late 19th century. Today it’s LIEmobil route 22 that climbs through here, linking Triesenberg centre with Masescha and Gaflei.

A practical note. The official 2026 timetable has no stop called Rotenboden. Going by the stops’ coordinates, the closest to the hamlet’s point on OpenStreetMap is Triesenberg, Samina, about 60 m away, with Almeina and Balischguad close by. The bus takes about two minutes from the centre. On weekdays it leaves the centre once an hour, from 06:29 to 20:59, and like every LIEmobil bus it takes cards or the app but never cash.

How I’d use it

Nobody comes to Rotenboden, you pass through it. My plan would be to ride route 22 up to Gaflei for the view of Vaduz from the tower, walk down to Masescha for the Walser chapel and keep going downhill through Rotenboden to Triesenberg centre and the Walser Museum. It’s all downhill, the hamlets come one after another, and route 21 is waiting at the end to take you back to Vaduz. With more energy I’d start higher still, at Silum, the alp above Masescha, which has no bus stop of its own.

If you want something longer, stage 2 of the Liechtenstein Trail leaves Triesenberg for the capital via the farm at Prufatscheng, which the Lexikon places north of the centre on this same side of the slope. The tourist board sells it on its view over the Rhine valley, and the listed house there has a core dated to 1547-1548.