Switzerland:
Did you know that the longest staircase in the world has 11674 stairs? It’s a two-mile staircase (slope is a 65-percent gradient). You can only climb it one day a year – 500 participants are allowed on that day. Amazing, right?
The Guinness Book of World Records recognized longest staircase can be found on Niesen Mountain with a whopping 11,674 stairs that’s more than three times as many as in the Burj Khalifa.
Mount Niesen is one of the Swiss Alps, located about forty miles south of the Swiss capital of Bern. At 7,700 feet, there are literally hundreds of higher mountains in Switzerland, but Niesen has been especially prized by Swiss painters like Ferdinand Hodler and Paul Klee for its shape, a pyramid of near-geometric perfection. Its name is the German word for “sneeze.”
In 1910, a funicular railway was completed from the village of Mülenen up to the peak. There are beautiful views of Lake Thun and the Simmen Valley from the lodge at its summit. Visitors can stay overnight in one of its eight cozy rooms, grab lunch at the glass-pavilion restaurant, or just enjoy drinks on the sunny terrace.
There is a two-mile staircase hat runs up the mountain right alongside it with a slope that gets up to a glute-grinding 65-percent gradient.
Every year, only five hundred visitors get to take the stairs.
For safety reasons, the stairs are just used for maintenance and not open to the public. But once a year, 500 lucky participants get to tackle the world’s longest staircase climb, the Niesen Treppenlauf. The event is held in June, but even so, it’s been cancelled several times in the past due to snow on the staircase. And the record for running up the equivalent of seven Empire State Buildings? A remarkable one hour and two minutes.