Wartau is a municipality in the Werdenberg constituency of the Swiss canton of St. Gallen. The municipality consists of a number of villages on the eastern flank of the Alvier group, along the left shore of the Alpine Rhine.
View of the ruined Wartau castle, looking south-east across the Rhine Valley towards Mittagspitz
View from Chamm, the ridge between Palfris and Tschggen alps (1,710 m, 5,610 ft), looking west-northwest towards Walensee.
Wartau Castle from the B13 road south of Sevelen, Canton Graubünden
Walser Rathaus, Palfries
The Walser people are the speakers of the Walser German dialects, a variety of Highest Alemannic.
They inhabit the region of the Alps of Switzerland and Liechtenstein, as well as the fringes of Italy and Austria.
The Walser people are named after the Wallis (Valais), the uppermost Rhône valley, where they settled from roughly the 10th century in the late phase of the migration of the Alamanni, crossing from the Bernese Oberland; because of linguistic differences among the Walser dialects, it is supposed that there were two independent immigration routes.
Juf (Avers), at 2,126 meters (6,975 ft) above sea level, is the highest permanently inhabited settlement in Europe. This Walser village was established in 1292 a few kilometers upstream of the Latin Val Ferrera.
Walser settlements in northwestern Italy