Switzerland’s image as a neutral, precise nation obscures a grim reality: it carried out more witchcraft executions than any other European country over 350 years. The final victim, Anna Göldi, was beheaded in 1782—the last witch execution in Europe—yet her story remains largely unknown beyond her hometown of Ennenda. The village now preserves her legacy in a museum dedicated to confronting its history of state-sanctioned murder, while nearby ski resorts transform the same folklore into a light-hearted winter festival.
The Anna Göldi Museum occupies the top floor of Ennenda’s Hänggiturm, an 18th-century timber-framed drying tower built during the textile boom. Inside, the atmosphere is heavy with history. Replicas of Göldi’s clothing, a blue-and-white striped skirt and a black waistcoat, hang beside court documents and witness statements, including accounts of the eight-year-old girl she was accused of bewitching. According to records, the child spat out pins and suffered convulsions, symptoms interpreted in 1782 as proof of supernatural forces.
Göldi’s trial took place in a region where witch hunts were not isolated incidents but a structured response to fear. “The Alps, with their fragmented geography, granted small communities and local courts a high degree of legal autonomy, allowing witchcraft accusations to spread rapidly under popular pressure,” says Dr. Lionel Dorthe, a historian with the Fribourg State Archives. “In these isolated valleys, a lack of scientific understanding in the face of harsh climates and agricultural shortages drove inhabitants to attribute natural disasters to occult forces.” Witches had often been singled out throughout Europe before, but often dismissed by the church as individuals in need of salvation, no-one burned at the stake. Earliest mention of witches pre-dates Christianity; in Homer’s Odyssey (c.800 BC), Circe is one.
Forbidden magic features heavily in Roman law statutes and continued onto Christian beliefs. Centuries later, the figure of the witch, as we now know it, began to emerge out of a need to defeat heresy, but without reference to witchcraft. In the Western Alps, that figure was the personification of winter, old, mean with the power to harm people. 15th-century Switzerland however, particularly the Alpine canton of Valais in the southwest, and the rural bi-lingual canton of Fribourg in the west, was a far cry from the serene snow-capped scenery it’s now famous for. Witch hunts varied in scale and chronology throughout the Alps but this part of Switzerland was an early epicenter.
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Witch hunts as tools of power
Between 1428 and 1447, Valais executed 3,500 individuals for witchcraft. Fribourg documented 360 trials between 1493 and 1741, while the region then known as Pays de Vaud recorded 3,000 cases in the same period. Accusations often stemmed from social conflicts: in Göldi’s case, her employer, a magistrate, faced potential scandal if her affair with him became public. After firing her, she allegedly threatened to expose their relationship. Historians now argue her execution served to eliminate a threat to the elite rather than address genuine witchcraft concerns.
For decades, Göldi’s story was suppressed by local shame. Descendants of families involved in her trial still live in Ennenda, and some residents initially opposed public acknowledgment of the past. That changed in 2008, when the canton’s parliament unanimously declared her a victim of “judicial murder.” The decision was championed by Walter Hauser, a local lawyer and author who spent years investigating the case. Hauser, who grew up in Glarus, discovered that trial records revealed a pattern: the powerful used witchcraft accusations to silence inconvenient individuals. Before his death, he founded the Anna Göldi Foundation and the museum.
The museum’s exhibits detail the mechanics of witch hunts, from the Hexenhammer’s calls for torture to a digital reconstruction of Göldi’s courtroom. A toxic family tree identifies the Glarus nobles who supported her prosecution, while audio recordings re-create the voices of her accusers, judges, and the child whose symptoms fueled the hysteria. The final display shows a harsh truth: Göldi’s case established the term “judicial murder,” illustrating how the legal system became a tool for eradication.
From shame to tourism’s twisted legacy
A short drive from Ennenda, the village of Belalp in Valais hosts an annual winter festival called Belalp Hexe, where skiers dressed as witches descend a mountain on broomsticks. The event, which began in 1983 as a tourist attraction, concludes with a race to the village below. Dr. Ursula Helg, director of the Anna Göldi Museum, states, “This is the first place where a witch was exonerated by a democratic vote. We have corrected a historic injustice.” For others, the witch hunts have become part of cultural identity, repurposed for tourism and festivity.
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The museum’s final exhibit immerses visitors in Göldi’s confinement. A dimly lit cell reconstruction, based on records from the prison in Mollis, features stone walls and a wooden door with iron fittings. A reproduction of the wooden block used for her execution, its surface worn smooth by centuries, stands nearby. Medical texts from the 18th century explain how symptoms like convulsions and pin-spitting were interpreted as signs of demonic possession. One translated excerpt from a 1750 physician’s notes describes the child’s condition as “Finding a scapegoat within the village had become the only way for a community to rationalize its fears and regain control over a hostile environment,” though modern analysis suggests the symptoms align with epilepsy or mass hysteria.
Outside the museum, Ennenda’s streets hold quiet reminders of the past. A narrow alley near the Hänggiturm bears a plaque marking the home of Göldi’s employer, the magistrate whose family still owns property in the village. The 2015 plaque reads: “Here lived the family whose actions led to Anna Göldi’s execution. Their silence was complicity.” Nearby, a café displays a framed letter from 1782, written by a local priest who pleaded for mercy on Göldi’s behalf, only for his appeals to be ignored.
Switzerland’s uneasy reconciliation with its past
The divide between Ennenda’s reckoning and Belalp’s celebration reveals how Switzerland has integrated its witch-hunting history into modern identity. One guide, a retired teacher named Markus Weber, leads groups to a meadow where 12 women were burned in 1658.