Topographic map of Switzerland: the swisstopo map, explained

What is the swisstopo map?

swisstopo, the Federal Office of Topography, is Switzerland's national mapping agency, based in Wabern near Bern. Its lineage runs back to the Dufour Map, the first official topographic map of Switzerland, surveyed under General Guillaume-Henri Dufour in the mid-19th century. swisstopo has surveyed and mapped the country ever since, and today it maintains the geodata behind every official Swiss map.

The map most Swiss hikers, climbers and ski tourers carry is the national map, the Landeskarte der Schweiz, known as the carte nationale in French and the carta nazionale in Italian. It is widely regarded among cartographers as one of the clearest topographic map series in the world, largely because of how carefully its rock faces and relief are drawn, a style refined over decades and still associated with the Swiss cartographer Eduard Imhof.

The same survey data also feeds a digital map you can browse online at map.geo.admin.ch. The map on this page is that one: the Pixelkarte, a single seamless map of the country that switches between the 1:25 000, 1:50 000 and 1:100 000 national map series as you zoom, alongside the Grey edition and SWISSIMAGE aerial photography.

How the map is made, and which swisstopo map is which

swisstopo keeps a national geodata model built from aerial photography, airborne laser scanning and field survey. Contours, rock faces, glaciers, buildings, paths and place names are all stored as data and used to draw the national map at each of its scales. Relief shading is calculated from the terrain model, then rock drawing and other detail is finished by hand in the Swiss manner, lit from the north-west, so cliffs and ridgelines read correctly at a glance.

Because the 1:25 000, 1:50 000 and 1:100 000 series are all drawn from that one model, the online Pixelkarte can show all of them as a single map that redraws itself as you zoom, rather than as separate named products. Here is the family in one table.

• Pixelkarte farbig (colour national map) (Multi-scale, digital): The seamless web map shown on this page and in Traverse. It switches between the national map scales as you zoom, and has been freely available since swisstopo opened its geodata in 2021.
• National Map 1:25 000 (1:25 000): The reference series for hiking and mountaineering. Its content is what the Pixelkarte shows at the closest zoom levels on this page.
• National Map 1:50 000 (1:50 000): Fewer sheets, built for touring and overview planning. It sits between the 1:25 000 and 1:100 000 content in the same web map.
• Pixelkarte grau (Grey) (Multi-scale, digital): The same map with the colour removed, made as a background for a route, a hazard layer or anything else drawn on top. This is the Grey edition on this page.
• SWISSIMAGE (Imagery): swisstopo's orthophoto mosaic of the whole country, flown by aircraft and updated on a rolling cycle. This is the SWISSIMAGE edition on this page.

How to read the swisstopo map

The symbols below are the ones that matter in the mountains. Each one has a button that moves the live map to a place where you can see it for real.

• Brown contour lines: On open ground and pasture, contours are drawn brown. Each line joins points of equal height, and a thicker index contour carries its elevation every so often. Count the lines between two labelled ones to read the interval at your zoom level.
• Black contour lines on rock: Once the ground turns to bare rock, the contours switch to black and thicken into hand-finished rock drawing. In steep faces like these, the lines merge into a single dark texture, which is what a wall looks like on this map.
• Blue contours on white: On glaciers and permanent snow the contours turn blue and the ground is left pale. If your route crosses blue contours, you are on ice, and rope, crampons and crevasse rescue skills apply.
• Blue crevasse hachures: Short blue strokes across a glacier mark a crevasse zone. They are a drawing of a pattern rather than a survey of individual crevasses, and glaciers change from one season to the next, so treat them as a warning, not a route.
• Grey dotted areas: Scree, moraine and bare rock debris. Above the treeline in the Alps, most of the ground between the paths and the cliffs is drawn this way.
• Green areas: Forest. The upper edge of the green is the treeline, a quick way to judge where shelter ends on the way up a valley.
• Thin black dashed lines: Footpaths and hiking trails. They thread between the huts and the passes here at Kleine Scheidegg, and are the same symbol used across the whole national map.
• Small square hut symbol: A mountain hut, labelled by name. German-speaking Switzerland uses "Hütte", French-speaking areas use "Cabane", Italian-speaking areas use "Capanna" and Romansh-speaking valleys use "Chamanna". An unstaffed shelter is usually a "Biwak".
• Red lines to a mountain station: Cable cars and gondolas. Several straight red lines converging on one point mean a summit station with more than one line serving it, as at Klein Matterhorn above Zermatt.
• Red line with black cross-ties: A rack railway. The cross-tie pattern marks a cog railway rather than an ordinary line, such as the one that climbs to Kleine Scheidegg beneath the Eiger.

1. Start with the shape: Zoom out until you can see the whole valley and read the hillshade first. It is lit from the north-west, so ridges catch the light and gullies fall into shadow, which makes the terrain readable before you look at a single contour.
2. Read the contour colour: Brown means earth or pasture, black means rock, blue means glacier or permanent snow. The colour alone tells you what kind of ground you would be standing on before you have checked anything else.
3. Check every height: Summits, cols and lakes carry spot heights in metres above sea level, referenced to the Swiss height network, LN02. Subtract the start from the high point and you have your ascent before you have opened any other tool.
4. Use the grid and the names: A faint black cross grid across the map is the Swiss coordinate system, LV95. Place names describe the terrain itself, a Horn is a peaked summit and a Joch is a high saddle, which the glossary below covers in full.

Browse the live National map map

This page loads the real swisstopo tiles in an interactive map, with National map and Grey and SWISSIMAGE and shortcuts to Matterhorn (Zermatt), Eiger (Kleine Scheidegg, Grindelwald), Aletsch Glacier (Eggishorn, Valais), Piz Bernina (Morteratsch, Engadin), Säntis (Alpstein, Appenzell), Lauterbrunnen valley (Bernese Oberland).

Swiss map words, in English

Switzerland has four national languages, and its maps carry all of them. Place names describe the terrain, so knowing a few dozen words across German, French, Italian and Romansh tells you what is there before you arrive.

Horn

Sharp, peaked summit

Stock

Mountain or massif

Grat

Ridge

Gipfel

Summit

Joch

High saddle or col

Pass / Col / Passo

Pass

Lücke

Gap or low point in a ridge

Sattel

Saddle

Firn

Old, compacted snow above the glacier ice

Gletscher / Glacier / Ghiacciaio / Vadret

Glacier, in German, French, Italian and Romansh

Spalte

Crevasse

Alp / Alpe

High summer pasture, not the range itself

Maiensäss

Middle-elevation meadow used between the valley and the high alp

Hütte / Cabane / Capanna

Mountain hut, in German, French and Italian

Biwak / Bivacco

Unstaffed bivouac shelter

Bach / Ruisseau / Torrente

Mountain stream

Tobel

Steep, wooded ravine

See / Lac / Lago

Lake

Piz

Peak, in Romansh, as in Piz Bernina

Fuorcla

Pass, in Romansh

Bisse / Suone

Historic irrigation channel following a hillside, mainly in Valais

Check the map against the ice

The Great Aletsch Glacier is the longest glacier in the Alps and part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch UNESCO World Heritage Site. On the national map it is drawn as pale ground crossed by blue contours, with dense blue hachures marking the crevasse fields along its bends. SWISSIMAGE, swisstopo's aerial photo layer, shows the same ice from above: the curved medial moraines, the crevasse arcs, and the bare rock at the glacier's edge where the ice has thinned.

Switch between the two on this page over the Eggishorn side of the glacier and the drawing and the photograph line up feature for feature. It is a fast way to see how much interpretation goes into a rock and ice drawing, and how quickly the ice itself keeps changing underneath it.

What the map does not tell you

• It shows the ground, not the conditions. Snow cover, avalanche danger, a washed-out bridge or a closed hut are not on any topographic map.
• Glaciers move faster than the map is revised. Outlines and crevasse zones are a survey of one moment, so treat them as a starting point and check recent imagery and reports before you commit to a route.
• Paths are not graded on the national map itself. A dashed line does not tell you whether the ground is a gentle walk or an exposed scramble with chains.
• The sheet stops at the border. Massifs that straddle a frontier, such as the Matterhorn or Monte Rosa, need the neighbouring country's map for the far side.

Use the swisstopo map in Traverse

Traverse is a mountain mapping app for the web and iPhone. The national map, its Grey edition and SWISSIMAGE are all in it, drawn on real 3D terrain, alongside the layers a paper map cannot give you.

• The swisstopo map in 3D: The same cartography draped over the terrain, so a wall of black rock drawing looks like the wall it is.
• Slope angle on top: Shade everything over 30° across the national map to see avalanche terrain and the low-angle way around it.
• Recent snow and glacier context: SnowSight shows satellite-observed snow cover with its date. GlacierIQ adds glacier outlines, ice flow and a crevasse-susceptibility index.
• Routes, GPX and offline: Draw a route or import a GPX, get distance, ascent and a profile, then download the area for use without signal.

A Traverse account is free and includes the Traverse, Summer, Winter and Satellite maps with slope angle and aspect. Official national maps, including the swisstopo maps, are part of Traverse Pro.

Create a free Traverse account · Download Traverse for iPhone

Frequently asked questions

Are swisstopo maps free?

Yes. Since 1 March 2021 swisstopo has published its geodata, including the national map and SWISSIMAGE, free to use under an open licence that only asks for a source credit. You can browse them at map.geo.admin.ch and on this page. Printed sheets from the swisstopo shop are still a paid product.

What scale is the Swiss hiking map?

1:25 000. One centimetre on the map is 250 metres on the ground. The same content is what the Pixelkarte on this page shows at its closest zoom levels.

What is the contour interval on Swiss maps?

On the 1:25 000 national map it is 20 metres in the Alps and 10 metres in flatter parts of the country, such as the Mittelland and the Jura.

What do the black contour lines mean on a Swiss map?

Contour colour changes with the ground. Brown is earth or pasture, black is bare rock, and blue is glacier ice or permanent snow. Black contours packed tightly together, or merged into rock drawing, mean a cliff.

How are heights measured on Swiss maps?

In metres above sea level, referenced to the Swiss height network LN02, which is tied to a fixed reference point, the Repère Pierre du Niton, in Lake Geneva.

Can I use swisstopo maps offline?

The map.geo.admin.ch website needs a connection. For the mountains you need an app that downloads the tiles before you leave. Traverse lets you save a region of the national map, with your route and terrain layers, for use without signal.

Do swisstopo maps cover the Italian or French side of the border?

Only a strip of it. Swiss national maps cover Switzerland and Liechtenstein, plus the neighbouring ground that happens to fall on a border sheet, but not whole foreign massifs. For the Italian side of the Matterhorn or Monte Rosa, or the French side of the Mont Blanc massif, you need the neighbouring country's map. Traverse includes the official maps of France, Austria and Germany for that reason. It does not have an official Italian map.

What is the difference between the Landeskarte and the Pixelkarte?

The Landeskarte is the national map itself, published at fixed scales such as 1:25 000 and 1:50 000. The Pixelkarte is the same content published as a seamless digital raster that redraws at every zoom level. The map on this page is the Pixelkarte.

Sources

• swisstopo, the Federal Office of Topography
• National Map 1:25 000
• National Maps, the full series
• map.geo.admin.ch, the official online map
• Free basic geodata (OGD) from swisstopo
• Maps & more, swisstopo's map-reading resources