Swiss cheese? Toblerone chocolate? The Swiss army knife? Expensive watches?
We all know them, but Switzerland also turns out to be a master at outsmarting potential enemies. And the country did so using charming cottages, like this one.
You think: what's wrong with a little villa or a farmhouse? These are trompe l'oeil houses behind which a military bunker hides, containing a cannon capable of reaching 21 kilometers, which, incidentally, was never used.
Until the end of 2004, the fake chalets were among Switzerland's best-kept secrets, but then photographer Christian Schwager presented his project Fake Chalets and revealed that hundreds of bunkers lay hidden behind idyllic facades as well as artificial rock formations.
Most of those bunkers with sufficiently masterful makeup were built during the Second World War as part of the Swiss Defence Line, known to the locals as the Toblerone Line due to the shape and structure of the concrete blocks.
Until the end of the Cold War, the Swiss continued bunkering to their heart's content . Many apartment blocks of a certain size were legally required to have a bomb shelter. In 2011, that obligation was briefly abolished, but immediately reinstated after the Fukushima disaster.
Switzerland has fewer inhabitants than Sweden, but possesses four times more nuclear shelters, in principle enough to protect the entire population.
In a number of the former fake chalets, tourists can now peep—uh, look—at what a four-star hotel and a zero-star hotel with no view of nature look like, while in others, cheeses for raclette are stored or tons of shiitake mushrooms.