Bare Bums Banned in the Alps — But Only in One Swiss Canton

The story began around 2008–2009 when dozens of mostly German nudists — inspired by the Freikörperkultur ('Free Body Culture') movement popular in Germany — discovered the scenic Alpine trails of the Appenzell region and began hiking in the nude. The verdant, picturesque canton became something of an unintentional nude hiking mecca, promoted on German-language websites as a 'special experience of nature, free and healthy.' Appenzell Innerrhoden, however, is one of Switzerland's most conservative and devout cantons — notably, it was the very last canton to grant women the right to vote, only doing so in 1990. Locals were outraged, with the cantonal justice chief publicly declaring 'We must protect our children from these immoral habits.' In April 2009, in a quintessentially Swiss display of direct democracy, citizens voted by a show of hands at their open-air Landsgemeinde assembly to ban naked hiking and impose a CHF 200 fine. A test case wound through the courts: a man fined CHF 100 after hiking nude past a family barbecue area and a Christian drug rehabilitation centre appealed all the way to Switzerland's highest court, which upheld the fine in 2011. The irony? The media attention attracted even more nudists to the region. Meanwhile, in neighboring cantons and across the rest of Switzerland, naked hiking remained entirely legal. A nearby tramway company even advertised the possibility of spotting nude hikers as a tourist attraction.