Andermatt is a village in the Ursern Valley in the Swiss Alps. A cable car offers access to Gemsstock ski area and a chairlift links the village with Nätschen's gentler slopes. To Andermatt's north, the path leading to Devil's Bridge, which spans the sheer gorge of Schöllenenschlucht, is one of many trails. The village's narrow streets are lined with traditional chalets, one housing the folk museum, Talmuseum Ursern.

Archaeological finds dating back to 4000 BC indicate that the Urseren was already populated in the Neolithic period. During Roman times this Alpine valley was probably inhabited by some Helvetic Celtic tribes. However, the origins of Andermatt can only be traced back to Alemannic tribes, the Walsers, who established settlements in the area, where the current town of Andermatt is situated.

The parish of Andermatt was not mentioned until 1203; it was held by the Benedictine Disentis Abbey. This first mention refers to it as de Prato. In 1290 it was mentioned as A der Matte. In 1649, with the emergence of an independent Swiss Confederation, the ecclesiastical rights of the Disentis monastery were revoked in favour of civil legislation.

In the Flight of the Earls, Irish earls lost a fortune in gold at the Devil's Bridge crossing ravine on St Patrick's Day 1608. It has never been recovered and is known as the Lost Treasure of the St Gotthard Pass.

Nearby Schöllenen Gorge is the site of a memorial commemorating the 1799 campaign of the Russian general Alexander Suvorov.

Between 1818-1831 the nearby St Gotthard Pass was made accessible to stagecoaches. As the last resort before the pass, Andermatt flourished economically and became a popular spa town.

The opening, in 1881, of the St Gotthard railway tunnel, however, reversed its fortunes as the tunnel runs immediately beneath the town, connecting the Central Swiss town Göschenen with Airolo in Ticino. Some Andermattians who worked on the tunnel were killed during its construction. A strike by the tunnel workers, furthermore, was put down by military force, killing a further four workers.

Since 1885, Andermatt has been a garrison town of the Swiss Federal Army. Here the infrastructure for the High Command of the Swiss Federal Army in an event of war was built. Today it is location of a Training Centre of the Swiss army.

Plans to build a series of reservoirs in the valley of Andermatt, the Urseren, encountered fierce resistance by the locals in 1946 and were abandoned four years later. A huge reservoir was built instead in the next valley, the Göschenertal.

Several avalanches, in particular in the winter of 1951 and 1975 have caused havoc in some residential areas of Andermatt, killing the inhabitants of the houses affected.

By the 1930s the town's income from tourism had seriously declined, and many of the Ursental's hotels were abandoned or changed use. The Grand Hotel Bellevue, which was built by the aristocratic Müller family from neighbouring Hospental (who at one time or another owned many other hotels nearby including the Hotel Furkablick and Hotel Furka Passhöhe - as well as hotels in Flüelen, Alpnachstad, Herisau and Neuchâtel) was converted in the 1970s into apartments, but by 1990 had been abandoned and was demolished with explosives. By the turn of the 21st century, as an alternative to the expensive skiing resorts in the Grisons (Graubünden) at St Moritz and Gstaad, Andermatt's fortunes again revived and the town has seen considerable expansion and is currently undergoing much speculative building.

Andermatt serves as a crossroads between southern Switzerland and the north as well as between eastern Switzerland (i.e. Graubünden/Grisons) and western Switzerland, (i.e. Valais, Bern and the Swiss Romande). The village is connected by three Alpine passes: the Oberalp Pass (6,706 ft; 2,044 m.) to the east connecting the Surselva in the canton of Graubünden, the St Gotthard Pass (6,909 ft; 2,106 m.) to the south connecting with the Valle Leventina in canton of Ticino, and the Furka Pass (7,992 ft; 2,436 m.) to the west connecting with the Obergoms in canton of Valais. To the north the steeply descending Schöllenen Gorge links Andermatt with Göschenen and is the location of the famous Devil's Bridge.

Since the opening of the Schöllenen route, around 1200, Andermatt has been on the Gotthard route.

The town is served by a Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB) owned and operated railway station. The station is connected with Brig and Visp (Valais) and with the western terminus of the Rhaetian Railway at Disentis/Mustér (Grisons). There is also a very short branch line, the Schöllenenbahn, nowadays part of MGB, between Andermatt and Göschenen, at the northern end of the Gotthard Rail Tunnel, connecting with the Gotthard railway line.