Festungsmuseum Crestawald

Description

In the Rheinwald, near the village of Sufers in the canton of Graubünden, lies Fortress Crestawald, a former artillery work of the Sufers defensive position that is now preserved as a military history museum. The installation was designed to block the north–south traffic route as part of the Reduit strategy and thus secure the mountain passes and the Viamala Valley in the event of an attack by the Axis powers.

The fortress is located between Sufers and Andeer on the old cantonal road and monitored the access routes from the Italo‑Swiss border via the Splügen Pass and the San Bernardino Pass from the direction of Ticino. Construction began under strict secrecy in September 1939 and was completed in June 1941. The core consisted of two 10.5 cm guns, Type 35 L42, named Silvia and Lukrezia, a licensed Swedish naval gun design manufactured in Switzerland. The pieces had a normal range of 17 km; with reduced accuracy they could reach up to 23 km. This allowed the fortress to secure the mentioned heights without itself being significantly threatened by enemy artillery.

For close defence there were positions blasted into the rock for machine guns, anti‑tank guns and three anti‑aircraft guns. Around 95 soldiers were permanently stationed there. Even after World War II the facility remained largely secret and was further expanded; this practice only ended at the end of the 20th century, and a filtration system against chemical warfare agents was installed in 1991. Approximately 10,000 shells were stored for the guns.

In the mid‑1990s the fortress was decommissioned; subsequently an association converted the installation into a museum. After decades of strict secrecy that extended into the Cold War, Fortress Crestawald was opened to the public in 2000. The museum preserves the original bunker installations and the artillery equipment and also documents the discipline and the code of silence that shaped the crews’ daily service.