Rhine Falls

Where it sits. The Rhine Falls break across the river about four kilometres downstream of Schaffhausen, at the point where the High Rhine, running west out of Lake Constance towards Basel, meets a bar of hard Upper Jurassic limestone. The falls are roughly 150 metres wide and drop about 23 metres, split into channels by two rock stacks left standing in mid-river. They form the boundary between the canton of Schaffhausen on the north bank, where the industrial village of Neuhausen am Rheinfall sits, and the canton of Zurich on the south, where Schloss Laufen stands on the cliff. By volume of water they are the largest waterfall in Europe, which is the honest way to state the claim: nothing on the continent is both this wide and this heavily fed.

Why the river falls here. The drop is young in geological terms. During the last glaciation the Rhine ran a different course; as the ice withdrew, roughly fifteen thousand years ago, the river was pushed onto its present line and forced to cut across the limestone ridge rather than along the softer gravels beside it. It has not managed to saw through, which is why the falls exist at all and why the two stacks in the middle survive as isolated towers. Average discharge is around 370 cubic metres a second, rising above 600 in a warm June when Alpine snowmelt is running; the recorded extremes are about 1,250 cubic metres a second in 1965 and a trickle of 95 in the drought of 1921. The falls are impassable to fish moving upstream, and historically only eels managed the climb.

What you actually see today. There are two quite different visits, one on each bank. On the Zurich side, Schloss Laufen, a castle first documented in 858 and now a visitor centre and hostel, sits directly above the water, and a staircase drops through the spray to the Kanzeli, a railed platform pushed out over the lip so that the river passes a couple of metres beneath the grille. On the Schaffhausen side, the small Schlossli Worth stands at water level with restaurants and the boat quay; from here small launches cross the pool and, in the classic version of the trip, land passengers on the tallest of the mid-river rocks, which is climbed by a stair cut into the stone to a platform with a Swiss flag on it. A footbridge and a riverside path link the two banks below the falls.

Industry, painters and the modern coach circuit. The falls were an industrial engine long before they were a viewpoint: the water powered ironworks and later the plant at Neuhausen where Swiss aluminium production began in 1888, and turbine houses still stand at the edge of the cataract. Goethe came in 1797, Turner painted the scene in the early 1840s, and the falls have been a standard stop on the northern European grand tour ever since. Their modern role is a different one. Because they lie half an hour from Zurich airport on the natural first morning of a Swiss circuit, they have become the opening stop of nearly every Indian group itinerary through the country, the point where a tour that will go on to Lucerne, Engelberg and the Bernese Oberland gets its first photograph. Hindi film units have used the setting in song sequences since Swiss locations became the industry's standard alpine backdrop in the early 1990s.

Timing, noise and light. The falls are loudest and widest in June and early July, when Alpine melt is at its height and the water carries a milky load of sediment; by late winter the flow can be less than a third of that, the rocks show more, and the pool turns a clearer green. Boats run roughly from late April to early October and stop in high water. On 31 July, the eve of the Swiss national day, the falls are lit and a large firework display is staged over them, which fills both banks. Morning light comes from behind the Laufen side and afternoon sun works better for photographs from the Neuhausen bank.

Getting there. Trains from Zurich take about fifty minutes to Schloss Laufen am Rheinfall station on the south bank, or you can travel to Schaffhausen and take the local train or bus to Neuhausen Rheinfall. Drivers will find paid car parks on both banks. The upper terraces and the castle courtyard are level and easily reached, but the platforms at the water require long flights of steps, and a lift on the Laufen side covers only part of the descent.