Giessbach, Multi-tiered waterfall in Brienz, Switzerland

Giessbach is a mountain stream in the Bernese Oberland that drops over 14 cascades, collectively called Giessbach Falls, across a 500-metre height difference into Lake Brienz. Near the Grandhotel Giessbach, a footbridge crosses beneath one of the falls, where the water spray reaches the path.

In the 1820s and 1830s the Brienz pastor Daniel Wyss and schoolmaster Johannes Kehrli opened paths to the falls for early tourists; Wyss named the fourteen cascades after Bernese historical figures. From 1856 to 1870 Eduard Schmidlin laid out the park and became first director of the pension built in 1858. The Grandhotel Giessbach, designed by Horace Edouard Davinet for the Hauser family, was built in 1873-1875.

Between 1820 and 1830 the fourteen falls were named after Bernese historical figures, from Berchtold von Zähringen, founder of Bern in 1191, at the top down to Niklaus Friedrich von Steiger, last Schultheiss of Bern, at the bottom. The Grandhotel Giessbach appears in the final episode of the series Band of Brothers and in the Nestor Burma episode "Nestor Burma dans l'île", and is a main setting of Alain Claude Sulzer's novel Un garçon parfait.

The Giessbachbahn funicular links the Giessbach See boat station on Lake Brienz (566 m) with a stop near the Grandhotel (656 m); it dates from 1879 and reopened on 18 May 2011 after work on the cars, the traction system and the 200 m bridge. A footpath from the shore leads up to the falls, and one bridge passes beneath a cascade where the spray reaches the walkway.

The Giessbachbahn, opened in 1879, is Europe's oldest funicular. It climbs from the lake shore at 566 m to a station near the Grandhotel at 656 m. Its cars were originally ballasted with water from the stream, and after restoration it reopened on 18 May 2011.