Schellenberg, the smallest municipality, up on the hill

Schellenberg has the charm of small places that don’t try to look big. It’s the municipality with the least land in Liechtenstein, perched on top of the Eschnerberg looking across to Austria, and it holds two ruined castles and a log house from 1518. For a quiet afternoon in the Unterland, it’s the one that wins me over.

A village of five hamlets

Schellenberg covers 3.6 km², making it the smallest municipality in the country, and with 1,180 residents at the end of 2025 it’s the second least populous, after Planken. The village runs along the back of the Eschnerberg, between 432 metres in the Schellenberger Riet and 698 metres on the Gantenstein, its highest point. To the north and east its boundary is the border with Tisis, Tosters and Nofels, all part of Feldkirch.

The Historisches Lexikon explains that today’s village grew out of five hamlets, Loch and Platta on the Vorder-Schellenberg, Mittel-Schellenberg, Hinderschloss and Hinter-Schellenberg. It had no centre until a church was built in Mittel-Schellenberg in 1855-56 and nuns arrived to found a convent in 1858. Mittel-Schellenberg won that rivalry between hamlets, and Hinterschellenberg gets its own page, Hinterschellenberg, because it has plenty of story to tell.

Where does the name come from?

From the lords of Schellenberg, who settled on the Eschnerberg before 1180 and built their two castles there. The Lexikon says it’s the only municipality in Liechtenstein with a purely German name, and the place name appears around 1277-81. The lordship named after them is the one the Prince bought in 1699, and with it began what we now call the Unterland.

The two castles

The two ruins, upper and lower, are the main reason to come. They were built from the late 12th century to watch over the road to Italy, changed hands many times and were already described as broken by 1616. In 1956 Prince Franz Josef II gave them to the country’s historical society, which excavated and stabilised them. The tourist board says the upper one is a short walk away and among the country’s favourite outings. I go through them stone by stone on the Schellenberg castles.

A log house from 1518

The other big draw is the Bäuerliches WohnMuseum, a log house from 1518 that has been moved several times to save it and that since 1994 has shown how a farming family lived around 1900. It’s at Dorf 62 and run by the LandesMuseum. It opens from April to October on the first and last Sunday of each month, 14:00 to 17:00, with no entry charge. In 2026 there are two dates left, 4 and 25 October. Everything about the house is on the Schellenberg farmhouse museum.

A church that broke new ground

The parish church you see isn’t old, and that’s exactly what makes it interesting. It was built in 1960-63 to a design by Eduard Ladner, winner of the first international architecture competition held in Liechtenstein, and the Lexikon regards it as the country’s first modern church. It has been listed since 1992. Beside the convent, on the old cemetery, the little Maria Rast chapel went up in 1993.

A hill with a border and a memory

Schellenberg has always looked towards Feldkirch. A medieval footpath links the village with the Austrian town via St Corneli, Tosters and the Margarethenkapf in an hour, and at Hinter-Schellenberg there’s a border crossing that has been unstaffed since 1987. That’s where, in May 1945, what was left of a Russian army crossed over, an episode the village marked in 1980 with a memorial stone. I tell that story on the Hinterschellenberg page.

The hill had its religious life and its inns too. The convent’s nuns, who arrived in 1858, worked for decades as nursery teachers, sacristans and nurses here and in other villages, and in 1998 the Archbishop of Vaduz, Wolfgang Haas, took up residence in the convent. In 1883 the «Krone» and «Kreuz» inns opened in Mittel-Schellenberg, and that same year the first of them housed the village’s first grocery shop.

To get around, route 33 climbs from Mauren and route 35 reaches Hinterschellenberg from Nendeln, Bendern and Gamprin. The fifth stage of the Liechtenstein Trail comes up from the Ruggeller Riet, passes the ruins and the museum and carries on towards Mauren. And if you stay for lunch, the Wirtschaft zum Löwen in Hinterschellenberg is on the official list of Käsknöpfle houses.