Saas-Fee

Saas-Fee (German pronunciation: [zaːs feː]) is the main village in the Saastal, or the Saas Valley, and is a municipality in the district of Visp in the canton of Valais in Switzerland.

The village is situated on a high mountain plateau at 1,800 meters (5,900 feet), surrounded by a total of 13 peaks above 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) which is the highest concentration in the Alps, giving the village the nickname the Pearl of the Alps.

It is a classic ski resort characterised by well-preserved Swiss wood architecture and a car-free city centre.

Its location close to the glaciers of the Dom and the Allalinhorn provides winter sport opportunities throughout the year, and neighbouring peaks such as the Weissmies, the Nadelhorn and the Lenzspitze are popular climbs in the summer season.

The community is considered to be a very attractive winter sport destination in the Swiss Alps.

Saas-Fee offers 22 lifts, including 3 cable cars, 1 funicular railway (Metro Alpin), 5 gondolas (1 dedicated to walkers), 2 chairlifts, the remainder being surface lifts (draglifts).

The decision to exclude most motor vehicles was made by the village at the time of the construction of the road from Saas Grund in 1951 in order to eliminate air pollution.

The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Azure, the initials SSF Or between two Mullets [of Six] Argent in base Coupeaux Vert.

[5] The historical population is given in the following chart:[4][11] In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the CVP which received 64.08% of the vote.

[13] In the 2007 Swiss Council of States election a total of 666 votes were cast, of which 30 or about 4.5% were invalid.

In the tertiary sector; 181 or 16.9% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 125 or 11.7% were in the movement and storage of goods, 615 or 57.4% were in a hotel or restaurant, 17 or 1.6% were the insurance or financial industry, 32 or 3.0% were technical professionals or scientists, 17 or 1.6% were in education and 12 or 1.1% were in health care.

[5] From the 2000 census[update], 1,177 or 80.9% were Roman Catholic, while 101 or 6.9% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church.

The education system in the Canton of Valais allows young children to attend one year of non-obligatory Kindergarten.

All the lower and upper secondary students from Saas-Fee attend their school in a neighboring municipality.

Founding contributors included eminent philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard, and many leading thinkers teach there to this day, including Slavoj Žižek, Judith Butler, Alain Badiou, Peter Greenaway, and Geert Lovink.

This appears to be an artistic device as the cable car, now replaced by a more modern version, runs between the edge of Saas-Fee and Felskinn which is considerably above the normal height for residential buildings.

Saas-Fee is also the setting of the second part of André Gide's novel Les faux-monnayeurs, as well as the setting of various ski chase sequences in the On Her Majesty's Secret Service film (1969) in the James Bond series.

Traditional raccard granaries in Saas-Fee
Saas-Fee as seen from the bottom of the slopes
Aerial view (1964)
Panorama showing parts of the Feeglacier, the Alphubel , Täschhorn , Dom and Lenzspitze on the left, and Saas-Fee and Saas-Grund at the bottom middle
Saas-Fee
City museum of Saas-Fee
Electric vehicle on Obere Dorfstraße, the main street in Saas-Fee
Herz-Jesu Church in Saas-Fee
Summer ski area in Mittelallalin . Location of ski scene in the James Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service