Bern: a UNESCO Old Town and the BärenPark on the Aare
Six kilometres of covered arcades, fifteenth-century astronomical clocks, Albert Einstein's two-room flat, and three brown bears that live year-round in an open enclosure on the river Aare.
Bern misleads at first glance. Small, provincial, neat — until you realise this is the country's capital, and that the medieval plan under your feet has not been redrawn since the twelfth century. Visitors arrive for half a day and leave after two — there are too many layers in this tight bend of the Aare.
The Old Town and six kilometres of arcades
Bern entered the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1983. The headline reason: the medieval covered arcades — Lauben — that line both sides of the main streets for roughly six kilometres in total. This is not a reconstruction or a tourist decoration; the arcades are living infrastructure, occupied by shops, cafés and law firms, and in winter you simply don't need an umbrella.
The principal axis — Spitalgasse → Marktgasse → Kramgasse → Gerechtigkeitsgasse — runs straight east from the railway station to the Nydeggbrücke bridge and the bear park. Along it are eleven Renaissance fountains, each with its allegorical figure: the Child-Eater (Kindlifresserbrunnen) on Kornhausplatz, the standard-bearer of Zähringen, blind-folded Justice.
Zytglogge and the astronomical clock
Zytglogge stands where the western city gate stood in the thirteenth century, and has functioned as a clock since 1530. Every hour, four minutes before the strike, a mechanical parade begins: the rooster crows, the jester rings his bell, a procession of bears marches out, and Chronos turns the hourglass. Below this is an astronomical dial showing the zodiac, lunar phases, and the position of the sun.
Tower tours run from inside — 20 CHF, 45 minutes, English and German. The climb passes the actual movement: enormous wooden gears built in 1530, still driving the entire mechanism essentially unaltered. Worth doing for the engineering alone.
Practical detail
- Tower tours daily at 14:15, April through October. Booking via the Bern Tourismus website.
- The exterior parade reads best from the south, on Kramgasse, four minutes before the hour.
- In winter the tower interior is closed; the exterior clock parade runs year-round.
The Einstein House and the Einstein Museum
At Kramgasse 49, two rooms on the second floor were where Albert Einstein lived from 1903 to 1905, while working as a clerk in the Bern patent office. He wrote four "annus mirabilis" papers here, including the original paper on special relativity. The site is a small museum-apartment: period furnishings, originals from the office, manuscripts. Entry 8 CHF; allow 30–40 minutes.
The larger Einstein Museum sits inside the Bern Historical Museum on Helvetiaplatz. It is a different, expansive exhibition — life, physics translated for non-physicists, era context, the Zeiss planetarium. Allow 90 minutes to two hours; ticket 18 CHF.
The Bundeshaus
The Federal Palace — Bundeshaus — sits a short walk from Zytglogge. Free guided tours run on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays — booking essential at parlament.ch, passport required. If you cannot get in, the summer fountain on the square outside throws twenty-six jets (one for each canton); the terrace behind the building gives a clear southward view across the Aare to the Bernese Alps.
In Bern, politics hides in the ordinary city fabric: the parliament works in the middle of a shopping street, and government ministers eat in the same bistro as students.
BärenPark: bears on the Aare
The bear has been the heraldic animal of Bern since the thirteenth century, and live bears have been kept inside the city without interruption since 1513. The old pit-enclosure at Nydeggbrücke was replaced in 2009 with BärenPark — a 6 000 m² terraced park descending all the way to the river. Two bears, Ursina and Björk, currently live here, joined by Finn. The park is open year-round and entry is free.
Visit in the morning after 9:00 or shortly before sunset — when heat drops, the bears become active. In summer noon they sleep in the upper forested section and there is little to see. Swiss brown bears do not hibernate completely; they remain active through January, then drowse for roughly two months.
Continuing up — the Rose Garden
A staircase, or the Marzili Bahn funicular (1.50 CHF), climbs from BärenPark to the Rosengarten — a hill park with 220 varieties of rose and a panoramic view back across the river to the Old Town. The Einstein bench and a small café terrace are here. Free, open at all hours.
Swimming the Aare
A Bern summer tradition: walk upstream to Marzili-Bad, leave your belongings in a locker, then float down with the current to the Dalmaziquai steps — about thirty minutes in the water. The river is transparent, turquoise-green, and around +20 °C in July. It is free and entirely legal but requires confident swimming: the current is fast and exit is only safe at the marked stairways. Marzili is closed in winter.