Bern

Bern sits at 542 metres above sea level inside a bend of the Aare, and that bend explains half the street plan. The medieval town could only expand westwards, which is why the lanes run in parallel rows. The old town has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1983. At the end of 2025, 146,867 people were registered as residents. Bern is the capital of the canton of Bern and the seat of the Federal Council, parliament and federal administration, making it the country's largest centre of public administration.

The Cronica de Berno gives 1191 as the founding year, under Duke Berthold V of Zähringen. Bern became a free imperial city in 1218 and joined the Swiss Confederation in 1353. The fire of 1405 destroyed much of the wooden town; the rebuild used sandstone, which still defines the look of the place. The Reformation took hold in 1528, and in 1536 Bern conquered Vaud, becoming the largest city state north of the Alps. French troops marched in during 1798 and Bern lost Vaud and Aargau. In 1848 the Federal Assembly chose Bern as the seat of the federal authorities, explicitly not as a capital: the idea was to avoid concentrating power in one place. In 1983 UNESCO added the old town to the World Heritage list, on the grounds that Bern had kept its medieval structure while adapting it to the tasks of a modern seat of government.

The Federal Palace stands on the southern flank of the old town, with the Bundesterrasse on the far side looking out over the Aare. The first federal parliament building opened in 1857; the present one, designed by Hans Wilhelm Auer, was completed in 1902. The interior can only be seen on a guided tour. Tours are free, last a maximum of 60 minutes and run outside parliamentary sessions from Tuesday to Saturday in German, French, Italian and English. Booking opens three days in advance at the earliest, with 30 places per tour. Anyone over 16 must show official photo ID, followed by a security check with a metal detector. Tours are suspended while parliament is sitting, but you can then follow the debates from the public gallery, with no registration needed for individuals. Details and the booking platform are on parlament.ch.

The covered arcades along the lanes run for a good six kilometres, making up one of the longest covered shopping streets in Europe. Useful in the rain, a crush on a Saturday morning. The medieval character survives best below the Zytglogge; further west there are few buildings older than 150 years. The city has over a hundred fountains, eleven of them figure fountains from the 16th century, still linked by the Stadtbach both above and below ground. The Zytglogge itself was the western gate of the town wall until 1256 and served as a prison before the fire of 1405. Its astronomical clock and mechanical figures date from 1530. Four minutes before the hour the golden cockerel crows, then the procession of bears turns, the jester rings in the hour too early and Chronos turns the hourglass. The whole thing lasts about a minute, so it pays to be there five minutes early.

The Fountain of Justice stands in the middle of Gerechtigkeitsgasse, a street 260 metres long. Hans Gieng made it in 1543: octagonal, in limestone. Justice wears a blindfold, holds a sword and scales, and at her feet sit a pope, an emperor, a sultan and a mayor. In Reformation-era Bern that was a political statement: law stands above worldly and clerical power. It is the only fountain in Bern to have kept all its original design elements. It has not had a quiet life, though. The scales and sword vanished in 1798 and were only replaced in October 1845, and on 13 October 1986 someone toppled the statue from its plinth, badly damaging it.

The town hall on Rathausplatz was built between 1406 and 1417 in the late Gothic style, under Heinrich von Gengenbach and the Rottweil carpenter Hans Hetzel. It was already in use by 1414. The ground-floor hall served as a market and courtroom, at a time when the town had roughly 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants. Politically the building still has two tenants: the cantonal parliament of Bern holds four sessions a year here, the cantonal government meets on Wednesdays, and every second Thursday evening the city parliament, 80 members strong, sits in the same chamber. Its sessions are open to the public. When the cantonal parliament is sitting, the Bernese flag flies from the roof. A neo-Gothic remodelling followed from 1865 to 1868, and the present appearance dates from the rebuilding of 1940 to 1942.

At the end of 2025, 146,867 people lived in the city, a quarter of them without a Swiss passport. The largest groups come from Germany and Italy. At 51.6 square kilometres the municipality is not big, but it stretches 15 kilometres west to Bümpliz and Oberbottigen. Work here is mostly in services: in 2018 the statistics recorded around 188,250 jobs, with one in eight working people employed by public administration, defence or social insurance. The University of Bern had roughly 18,500 students in the autumn semester of 2019. Politically the city has had a red-green majority without interruption since the municipal elections of 1992, while the surrounding agglomeration votes further right. And Bern is expensive: for years it has been listed alongside Zurich and Geneva among the cities with the highest cost of living worldwide. Full figures are at Statistik Stadt Bern.

Bern station sits at the western end of the old town, a few minutes' walk from the Zytglogge. With around 150,000 travellers a day it is the busiest station in Switzerland after Zurich's main station. The fastest trains take 56 minutes to Zurich and the same to Basel. The Bern S-Bahn connects the city to Thun, the Emmental, Biel, Solothurn, Neuchâtel, Fribourg and Schwarzenburg on 13 lines. Within the city, Bernmobil runs five tram lines, three trolleybus lines and fifteen bus lines. Anyone arriving by car should adjust their expectations: the city has decided to introduce a 30 km/h limit on most streets and to remove half of its roughly 17,000 public parking spaces. Parking in the old town lanes is a bad idea in any case. Bern-Belp airport is just under ten kilometres away, but it has had no scheduled flights since 2018.