The Hindu Business Line : Bern out!

Land-locked and surrounded by mountains with relatively unpolluted lakes, Switzerland has been attracting tourists for centuries. Its striking scenery provides plenty of opportunities to the sporty types who want to spend their summers hiking and mountaineering, and their winters gracing the ski-slopes. In their hurry to reach the mountains, they often steer clear of Bern, a vibrant city that has been the capital of Switzerland since 1848.

We made a beeline to the mediaeval town centre, which was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1983. The cobbled streets and pale grey-green sandstone houses in the Old Town are a pleasure to explore. Each of the 11 Renaissance fountains in the old town, all from the 16th century, represents an aspect of the city’s past. Square banners with the colours of the Swiss cantons and the traditional craft guilds flutter everywhere; geraniums on thousands of window sills and balconies enliven the sandstone facades. From dusk to midnight, many buildings and monuments are floodlit.

Bern’s oldest structure is the former western gate, built between 1191 and 1295 but adapted into a Clock Tower (Zytglogge) in 1530 with an enormous astronomical clock and hourly sideshow of revolving bears. It’s said the Clock Tower helped Albert Einstein hone his Theory of Relativity, developed while working as a patent clerk in Bern.

Bern and Bear

Bern sounds like it has something to do with bears, and indeed it does. The city’s quirkiest attraction is surely the Bear Pits. Legend has it that Berchtold V, Duke of Zahringen, who founded the city in 1191, named it after the first animal killed in a hunt. That was a bear, and for nearly 500 years these creatures have been kept on public display. Animal rights activists have long disapproved of the small dens as cruel, and there’s talk of building a larger park for the bears soon.

Our next stop was the Zentrum Paul Klee, an eye-catching museum that opened its doors to art lovers in 2005. At the heart of this institution is the artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), his life and his work. The artist, who also dabbled in music, teaching and poetry, spent half of his life in Bern. Of the 10,000 or so works that make up Klee’s oeuvre, almost 40 per cent, that is around 4,000 paintings, watercolours and drawings as well as biographic material, has been brought together at the museum. The building housing the collection is remarkable — it curves up and down like ocean waves, forming three ‘hills’ in the agricultural landscape on the outskirts of the town.

Einstein home

After a quick lunch, we made our way to Einstein Haus, the humble apartment where the scientist lived with his young family from 1903 to 1905. The flat, on the second floor of Kramgasse No 49, has been restored in the style of that period to reflect Einstein’s crucial years in Bern. The entrance has been redecorated as well as the stairway, which welcomes visitors with an illustration of the Milky Way. The old spiral staircase to the second floor has been left in its original state. The living conditions of Einstein, his Serbian-born first wife Mileva and their son Hans Albert are shown more accurately in the apartment on the second floor with furniture from that time as well as pictures and texts.

Our last stop was the 15th-century Gothic Munster (cathedral), its feathery spire — the highest in Switzerland — towering over the Old Town. It’s a reverential and awe-inspiring place, both for its lofty, gloomy interior and the terrific views from its tower all the way to the Bernese Alps on a clear day. But be warned: this is a steep 100-metre climb. The 1520s choir stalls are marvellous and the gorgeous stained-glass windows of the choir date from 1450. On the south side of the church is the Munsterplattform, a buttressed terrace above the River Aare which took about 100 years from 1334 to build. Of all Swiss cities, Bern is arguably the most immediately charming: cobbled lanes that have barely changed in over 500 years, heavily wooded hills and riverbanks, and breathtaking views of the Old Town and the majestic Alps. It’s a world made to please.

Heritage and cosmos