Where to Stay in Bern, Canton de Berne

What is Bern known for?

Bern holds most of the institutions of the Swiss Confederation, and its old town carries a UNESCO World Heritage listing for the coherence of its design rather than for any single building. Arcades run under the housefronts for kilometres, fountains stand in the middle of the streets, and clock towers close the view at either end. Paul Klee is the other name here.

The Zentrum Paul Klee keeps the largest collection of his work, while the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Kunsthalle Bern divide the older and the newer art between them.

What are the main landmarks in Bern?

Nydegg Castle marks the spot where Bern began, at the low point of the Aare bend, and the town climbed west from it under the arcades. Fountains punctuate that spine. The Former Granary and the Dutch tower survive from the working town, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul stands at the eastern end of the arcaded streets, and the Einsteinhaus keeps the flat where Albert Einstein lived while writing the papers of 1905.

Art closes the list. The Kunstmuseum Bern and the Kunsthalle Bern hold the older and the newer halves of it, and the Zentrum Paul Klee sits apart on the eastern edge of the city.

What is the history of Bern?

Bern was founded in 1191 on a spur inside a bend of the Aare, a site with water on three sides and one gate to hold. The town then grew west along a single street and kept doing so for centuries. Fire settled its appearance.

After the medieval timber town burned, Bern rebuilt itself in green sandstone, and the arcades, fountains and clock towers went up as one continuous frontage rather than as separate monuments, which is why the old town is listed by UNESCO as a whole. Power arrived with the rebuilding. Bern ran the largest city state north of the Alps, pushed its territory west across the plateau, and stamped its bear on everything it held.

The Confederation made it the federal city in the nineteenth century and the institutions followed, among them the postal union whose founding the Universal Post Monument commemorates, and the Swiss Literary Archives and the SAPA Foundation still keep national collections here. Albert Einstein was examining patents at the time. He wrote the papers of 1905 in a flat on the arcaded main street, now the Einsteinhaus, a few minutes uphill from the Nydegg Castle corner where the whole town started.

Where is Bern?

The Aare wraps Bern on three sides, cutting a green trench below the town and leaving the old streets on a sandstone spur above the water. Bridges do the work here. Nydegg Castle sits at the oldest crossing, Kirchenfeld and its museums stand on the far bank, and the Engehalbinsel loops north inside a second bend of the same river.

Beyond the roofs the Alps close the southern skyline on a clear day, while the plateau runs southwest toward Lausanne and Geneva.

What is the climate of Bern?

Cold air pools in the Aare trench, so Bern's winters are grey more often than they are bright, with fog under the bridges while the Alps stand clear above it. Summers turn warm and thundery. The föhn drops off the mountains and scours the sky for a day or two at a time, and the river keeps enough of the snowmelt in it that swimmers only drift the loop through the warmest weeks of the year.

How do you get to Bern?

Bern Hauptbahnhof sits at the top of the old town, which puts the intercity trains from Zurich, Basel and Geneva a few minutes' walk from the arcades. Trams leave from the same doors. They run the length of the old town spine and over the Aare to Kirchenfeld, the Tram-Museum Bern keeps the cars that used to do it, and the Lötschberg line carries the southbound traffic under the Alps.

The airport at Belp is a small one. Most people arrive by rail.