Saas-Fee

granaries in Saas-Fee 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. Typical activities include skiing, snowboarding, snowshoe trekking, canyon climbing and ice climbing. 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 ski run has a vertical drop of 1,800 m (5,906 ft), a top elevation of 3,600 m (11,811 ft) and covers ( beginner, intermediate, advanced). Other activities include paragliding, hang gliding, and tobogganing. Saas-Fee can be reached by car or bus – postal buses run during much of the day half-hourly from Brig and Visp, though none provides a service beyond the bus terminal through the length of the town during the winter. No cars are allowed to enter the city (they have to be parked in special car parks outside); only small electric vehicles operate on the streets between the hotels and ski area. 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 resort offers many culture, sports, and off-slope activities, including classical music, a sports and leisure complex, restaurants, and nightclubs. The resort features the highest underground funicular railway in the world up to the skiing area and the highest revolving restaurant in the world at . The touristic slogan of Saas-Fee is "Die Perle der Alpen" (The Pearl of the Alps) as it is surrounded by a total of 13 peaks above , the most in the Alps. A campus of the European Graduate School is located in Saas-Fee. ==History==

Saas-Fee is first mentioned in 1304 as vee. The municipality was formerly known by its French name Fée (); however, that name is no longer used. ==Geography==

, Täschhorn, Dom and Lenzspitze on the left, and Saas-Fee and Saas-Grund at the bottom middle Saas-Fee has an area, , of . Of this area, 5.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while 9.5% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 1.3% is settled (buildings or roads) and 83.6% is unproductive land. The municipality is located in the Visp district, at the foot of Dom Mountain. The village is surrounded by thirteen Four-thousander mountains (mountains that are at least above sea level). ==Coat of arms==

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

Saas-Fee has a population () of . , 28.5% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of 3.4%. It has changed at a rate of 0.5% due to migration and at a rate of 6.3% due to births and deaths. Most of the population () speaks German (1,243 or 85.5%) as their first language. The German dialect spoken is called Walser German and is partly unintelligible to speakers of Standard German. Serbo-Croatian is the second most common (98 or 6.7%) and Portuguese is the third (47 or 3.2%). There are 16 people who speak French, 12 people who speak Italian and 2 people who speak Romansh. , there were 625 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.2 persons per household. , the construction rate of new housing units was 12.2 new units per 1000 residents. Colors= id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9) id:darkgrey value:gray(0.8) ImageSize = width:960 height:210 PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100 AlignBars = justify DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:1500 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:300 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:60 start:0 PlotData= color:yellowgreen width:40 mark:(line,white) align:center bar:1850 from:start till:233 text:"233" bar:1860 from:start till:217 text:"217" bar:1870 from:start till:237 text:"237" bar:1880 from:start till:228 text:"228" bar:1888 from:start till:245 text:"245" bar:1900 from:start till:280 text:"280" bar:1910 from:start till:357 text:"357" bar:1920 from:start till:317 text:"317" bar:1930 from:start till:439 text:"439" bar:1941 from:start till:475 text:"475" bar:1950 from:start till:504 text:"504" bar:1960 from:start till:739 text:"739" bar:1970 from:start till:895 text:"895" bar:1980 from:start till:990 text:"990" bar:1990 from:start till:1242 text:"1,242" bar:2000 from:start till:1454 text:"1,454" ==Politics==

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the CVP which received 64.08% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the FDP (23.78%), the SVP (7.06%) and the SP (3.2%). In the federal election, a total of 678 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 67.1%. In the 2009 Conseil d'État/Staatsrat election a total of 703 votes were cast, of which 26 or about 3.7% were invalid. The voter participation was 69.5%, which is much more than the cantonal average of 54.67%. In the 2007 Swiss Council of States election a total of 666 votes were cast, of which 30 or about 4.5% were invalid. The voter participation was 66.3%, which is much more than the cantonal average of 59.88%. ==Economy==

, Saas-Fee had an unemployment rate of 3.3%. , there were 5 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 2 businesses involved in this sector. 131 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 19 businesses in this sector. 1,169 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 182 businesses in this sector. , there were 227 workers who commuted into the municipality and 65 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 3.5 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. Of the working population, 6.8% used public transportation to get to work, and 4.3% used a private car. ==Religion==

From the , 1,177 or 80.9% were Roman Catholic, while 101 or 6.9% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 81 members of an Orthodox church (or about 5.57% of the population), and there was one individual who belongs to another Christian church. There was one individual who was Jewish, and 12 (or about 0.83% of the population) who were Islamic. There were 2 individuals who were Buddhist and 2 individuals who belonged to another church. 22 (or about 1.51% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 55 individuals (or about 3.78% of the population) did not answer the question. ==Education==

In Saas-Fee about 613 or (42.2%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 113 or (7.8%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule). Of the 113 who completed tertiary schooling, 65.5% were Swiss men, 19.5% were Swiss women, 9.7% were non-Swiss men and 5.3% were non-Swiss women. During that school year, there 2 kindergarten classes (KG1 or KG2) and 32 kindergarten students. The canton's school system requires students to attend six years of primary school. In Saas-Fee, there were a total of 8 classes and 137 students in the primary school. The secondary school program consists of three lower, obligatory years of schooling (orientation classes), followed by three to five years of optional, advanced schools. All the lower and upper secondary students from Saas-Fee attend their school in a neighboring municipality. , there were 73 students from Saas-Fee who attended schools outside the municipality. Saas Fee is also the location of the European Graduate School. EGS was established in 1994 as a postgraduate degree-granting school. 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. ==Mountains==

Saas-Fée is the setting of the second part of André Gide's 1925 novel Les faux-monnayeurs where the village is described as a retreat far away from the societal pressures at the time. . The famous ski chase scene in the 1969 James Bond movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was filmed in the Mittelallalin ski area above Saas-Fee. Saas-Fee was the location for the filming of the video of Wham!'s hit single Last Christmas in 1984. The cable car that they get into to go up the mountain is labelled with the name "Saas-Fee" in the typical Saas-Fee font. 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. In 2024, the surviving cast and crew from the recording of the Last Christmas music video returned to the village for the unveiling of a pillar commemorating the song's 40th anniversary. ==Notable people==

• Arnold Andenmatten (1922–2018, skier) • Alexander Burgener (1845–1910, mountain guide) • Carl Zuckmayer (1896–1977, German writer, interred in Saas Fee) • Matthias Zurbriggen (1856–1917, alpinist) • Frederik Kalbermatten (b. 1981, snowboarder) ==See also==