Vaduz

Vaduz is a capital city where about 6,000 people live. It is the capital of Liechtenstein, a tiny country between Switzerland and Austria.

A steep mountainside rises behind the town.

Vaduz is the capital of Liechtenstein, a country in the Alps between Switzerland and Austria. The town lies where the flat valley of the Rhine River meets a steep mountainside.

Liechtenstein's statistics office counted 6,109 people in the commune of Vaduz at the end of 2025 (a preliminary figure). That is a little fewer than Schaan, the next commune to the north, so the capital is not the country's most populous commune.

The Historical Lexicon of the Principality of Liechtenstein describes Vaduz as the political commune and main town of the principality, 455 m above sea level at its parish church, with an area of 17.284 km². Besides the town itself, the commune owns six exclaves: four on the Rhine valley side (the farmland of the Vaduzer Riet and three forest plots) and two Alpine pastures in the mountains.

City Population's table from the Office of Statistics gives 6,109 people for Vaduz on 31 December 2025 (preliminary), up from 5,741 in the 2020 register-based census. Schaan had 6,297, so Vaduz ranks second of the 11 communes.

A castle stands on a ledge high above Vaduz. The prince of Liechtenstein lives there.

Down in the town is an art museum shaped like a big dark box.

Vaduz Castle stands on a narrow ledge about 100 meters above the town. It was first mentioned in about 1322, and since 1938 it has been the home of Liechtenstein's ruling prince.

Down in the town's pedestrian zone stands the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, the country's museum of modern and contemporary art. It opened in November 2000. The museum calls its building the 'Black Box': its dark walls are made of tinted cement, black basalt and river pebbles, ground until they gleam softly.

Encyclopaedia Universalis says the castle, mentioned in a document from about 1322, was destroyed in the Swabian War of 1499, rebuilt over the following centuries and restored in 1905–1916 in the style of the 16th century. The princes owned it from 1712, but Franz Joseph II, who came to the throne in 1938, was the first to make it his permanent home.

The Kunstmuseum, designed by Meinrad Morger and Heinrich Degelo with Christian Kerez, is a dark block 60 m long, almost 25 m wide and 12 m high, with 1,750 m² for exhibitions. Its facade mixes cement colored with soot and iron oxide, black basalt and river pebbles that echo the Rhine valley, ground to a gently gleaming surface.

Grapes have grown on the slopes of Vaduz for a very long time.

Vaduz also has museums, with art and with stamps.

The first record of grapevines in Vaduz is from 1249. Wine growing was an important trade there until the late 1800s, and a town plan drawn up in the 1970s turned most of the vineyards from building land into protected vine zones; it took effect in 1982.

Vaduz has several museums. The Postal Museum, founded in 1930, shows stamps Liechtenstein has issued since 1912. Many people come to Vaduz to work: in 2005 the town had 8,114 jobs, but fewer than one worker in five lived in Vaduz itself.

The Historical Lexicon traces wine growing to 1249, when a papal document named a vineyard in Vaduz among the property of Bregenz Abbey; a zoning revision of 1973–1976 turned most vineyard areas from building land into protected vine zones, in force from 1982.

In 2005 Vaduz had 8,114 jobs: 1,394 (17.2%) held by Vaduz residents, 3,506 (43.2%) by people from other Liechtenstein communes and 3,214 (39.6%) by people living abroad. Universalis adds that the Postal Museum displays every stamp the country has issued since 1912, and the lexicon that the National Museum reopened in 2003 after more than ten years.