Famous Landmarks in Bern
Grey sandstone arcades and covered passages fill a medieval old town looped by the Aare.
Bern's landmarks cluster inside the loop the Aare carves around the old town, a UNESCO-listed core of sandstone arcades and covered passages laid out mostly after the 15th century. The Zytglogge, a guard tower turned clock tower, marks one of the old fortifications' gates and remains the oldest standing monument in the city. East of it, Bern Minster's Gothic tower, raised over more than four centuries, is the tallest of any cathedral in the country. Nydegg Church sits on the old town's eastern edge, in the district that gives it its name. Outside this medieval nucleus, the Federal Palace occupies the southwest edge of the old city: a Renaissance Revival and Beaux-Arts complex built in three phases between 1852 and 1902 to house the Swiss government and parliament.
Zytglogge
1218
A squat, ochre-walled tower rising to a steep pyramidal roof; its face carries a gilded astronomical clock ringed with zodiac signs, and mechanical figures perform on a clockwork above it each hour.
The Zytglogge began in the early thirteenth century as a guard tower marking one of the gates in the city's fortifications, and over eight centuries it has also served as a prison, a clock tower and a civic memorial. Its fifteenth-century astronomical clock and mechanical figures, added long after the tower's construction, made it a fixture of daily life in the old town. Despite repeated redecoration and renovation, it remains Bern's oldest standing monument and part of the old city's UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Photo: Mike Lehmann, Mike Switzerland 13:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Federal Palace
1902 · Hans Wilhelm Auer
A long, low sandstone façade in Renaissance Revival dress, over three hundred metres end to end, made up of three visibly distinct wings built decades apart yet aligned into a single symmetrical composition.
The Federal Palace grew in three stages: a west wing built from 1852 to 1857 under Jakob Friedrich Studer to house the federal government, administration and parliament together; an east wing added from 1884 to 1892 under Hans Wilhelm Auer to relieve overcrowding; and a central parliament building, also by Auer, completed in 1902 to link the two. It remains the seat of the Federal Assembly and the Federal Council, and underwent its first comprehensive renovation early in the twenty-first century.
- The complex is a listed, symmetrical building just over three hundred metres long.
- More than thirty years separate the start of the east wing from the completion of the central parliament building.
Photo: Ank Kumar (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Bern Minster
1421–1893
A single tall Gothic tower dominates the skyline, its spire reaching 100.6 metres, the tallest cathedral tower in the country; the upper stages were only added centuries after the nave below.
Bern Minster is a Reformed Protestant cathedral, classed as a minster, in the old city. Built in the Gothic style, it took over four centuries to complete: construction started in 1421, and the tower, standing 100.6 metres, was not finished until 1893. That height makes it the tallest cathedral tower in the country. The building is registered as a class A Swiss cultural property of national significance.
Photo: Wladyslaw Sojka (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nydegg Church
1346
A modest Gothic-style church set at the eastern edge of the old town, in the low-lying district that gives it its name, away from the more monumental buildings toward the town's centre.
Nydegg Church, built in 1346 in the Gothic style, stands on the eastern edge of Bern's old city, in the Nydegg district after which it is named — a Bernese German term meaning roughly 'lower corner'. It functions as an Evangelical Reformed parish church and is listed as a class B Swiss cultural property of regional significance, a rank below the class A heritage sites elsewhere in the old town.
Photo: Wladyslaw Sojka at German Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
History
Fortified settlements had stood on the site since antiquity, but the city proper was founded around 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen, on the peninsula the Aare loops around. Bern became a free imperial city in 1218 and joined the Swiss Confederacy in 1353, then expanded for centuries as a sovereign city-state controlling territory well beyond its walls. From the 15th century the town was rebuilt piece by piece in the sandstone that still faces its arcaded streets, giving the old town the uniform look it has kept since. Bern was made the federal city in 1848, and the government complex that followed, the Federal Palace, was raised in stages through the second half of the nineteenth century to house the new state.