Schaanwald, Liechtenstein's doorway to Austria

Schaanwald is the kind of place that explains Liechtenstein better than a museum does. A roadside hamlet on the Austrian border, where the customs post is run by officers from another country, where there were Roman baths, and where in 1945 local Girl Guides fed hundreds of refugees a day. I’m covering it because hardly anyone stops, and it’s worth at least knowing what you’re driving through.

A hamlet born in the 19th century

Schaanwald belongs to the municipality of Mauren and sits at the foot of the Maurerberg, cut off from the village by the Maurer Riet. Its name turns up from 1390 in boundary descriptions between the lordships of Jagdberg, Feldkirch and Schellenberg, but the village itself is young. The Historisches Lexikon says that in the mid-19th century there was only a mill with an inn, two houses, a carriers’ depot and the customs house.

It grew once a general building ban was lifted in the 1840s and a coloured-weaving mill opened in 1866 in Tisis, just over the border. By 1900 it had 27 houses strung along the road, and in 1899 it got its own school. St Theresa’s church, the building that catches your eye from the road, went up between 1936 and 1939 thanks to a villagers’ association and was consecrated in 1939. Its stained glass is by Johannes Troyer.

Why is the customs post run by the Swiss?

Because of the country’s monetary and customs history. The post moved from Nendeln to Schaanwald in 1808, vanished while Liechtenstein was in a customs union with Austria between 1852 and 1919, and came back afterwards. Since the 1924 customs treaty with Switzerland it has been staffed by Swiss officers, and the Lexikon records its official title, the Swiss customs office of Schaanwald in the Principality of Liechtenstein. A fair number of Protestant families settled with them, and in 1939 about 50 of Schaanwald’s 241 residents belonged to customs staff households.

For a traveller the practical point is simple. There’s no customs border between Switzerland and Liechtenstein, but here you do cross into Austria. I go into the detail on Liechtenstein’s borders and customs.

The Roman bath

Long before the customs post, the Roman road from Milan to Augsburg ran past here, and beside it stood an estate with baths. The bath house was excavated in 1928, a single-storey building about 13 metres wide and 10 deep, built of flysch and tufa and reached along a paved path. At the front were the changing room and cold bath, and from the changing room you passed into the warm room and the hot room, which had an apse and two tubs. The boiler room that heated the floor sat in the south-west corner.

It’s thought to have been built around AD 100 and abandoned in the 3rd or 4th century. In 1929 two farm buildings and a stretch of the Roman road came to light, and the finds included a brooch shaped like a peacock. If this period interests you, the Unterland’s other major Roman site is at Nendeln.

Refugees in 1945

The Schaanwald border saw its hardest days at the end of the war. In April and May 1945 thousands of refugees gathered on the Austrian side, and the Lexikon says Liechtenstein’s Girl Guides fed between 800 and 1,000 admitted people in Schaanwald every day. In the same days, in the early hours of 3 May, a small Russian army crossed a few kilometres to the north, the story told in Hinterschellenberg and the 1945 Russian crossing. For the background, see Liechtenstein in the Second World War.

Getting in and out

By car, the LandesMuseum advises anyone coming from Austria to leave the A14 at exit 41 Feldkirch-Frastanz and carry on through Schaanwald to Vaduz. It’s a busy road, and as far back as 2011 the Lexikon put traffic at around 15,000 vehicles a day. By bus, route 13 passes through Schaanwald towards Feldkirch, and there’s a LIEbike station. The hamlet also gives its name to the Casino Schaanwald, one of the four in my guide to casinos in Liechtenstein.

Trains are another matter. The Lexikon says Schaanwald had a stop from 1902, but the 2025-26 ÖBB timetable lists just three stops in the country, Nendeln, Forst Hilti and Schaan-Vaduz, so don’t count on one.

The end of the trail

If you’re walking the Liechtenstein Trail, this is where you finish. The fifth stage leaves Ruggell, crosses the Ruggeller Riet, climbs to the Schellenberg ruins, passes Mauren’s herb garden and the Birka bird reserve, which lies in Schaanwald, and ends at the customs post after 19.4 km. The full route, with climbs, is on stage 5 of the Liechtenstein Trail.