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Switzerland

5 city guides · Europe

Cities in Switzerland (5)

Europe
🇨🇭 Switzerland

Bern

Bern (Berne in French and English — population 133,000 in the city, 420,000 in the Bern agglomeration — the federal capital of Switzerland and the most underrated city in Central Europe) sits on a peninsula formed by a 90° bend in the Aare River, which encircles three sides of the medieval old town in a loop of glacial blue-green water so clear that the rocky bottom is visible from the bridges above. Bern was founded in 1191 by the Duke of Zähringen and grew to become the dominant city-state of the Swiss Confederation: the capital since 1848 (when Switzerland adopted its federal constitution — the first federal democratic republic in Europe), and the home of the Swiss Federal Palace (the Bundeshaus — the seat of the Swiss Federal Council and the Federal Assembly). Bern's UNESCO-listed medieval old town (listed 1983) is the most intact medieval city center in Switzerland: the 6km of continuous covered arcades (the Lauben — the covered walkways under the upper stories of the medieval buildings that run continuously through the entire old town, providing shelter from the Bernese rain and snow) are the defining architectural feature of Bern and the longest continuous covered promenade in the world. Bern is also the city where Albert Einstein lived from 1902 to 1909 (the period in which he published the four papers of the "annus mirabilis" (1905) that revolutionized physics: the papers on the photoelectric effect (for which he received the Nobel Prize), Brownian motion, special relativity and mass-energy equivalence (E=mc²)) — his apartment at Kramgasse 49 is now the Einstein Museum.

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🇨🇭 Switzerland

Geneva

Geneva (population 203,000 — "Genève" in French, "Ginevra" in Italian, "Genf" in German) is the most precisely international-organization-headquarters single Swiss city and the most comprehensively humanitarian-law-originating and the most precisely Red-Cross-founding single European city. The Jet d'Eau (the most precisely 140-metre-high single Lake Geneva water jet fountain — the most photographically iconic single Geneva landmark: originally a hydraulic pressure release valve 1891 repurposed as the most precisely Geneva-tourism-symbol single water fountain), the Old Town (the most precisely Calvin-Reformation-1541 single most important Protestant Reformation city outside Wittenberg: Geneva was the most precisely "Protestant Rome" single Reformation city designation), the Palais des Nations (the most precisely former-League-of-Nations-1936-constructed single Geneva UN European headquarters), the International Red Cross Museum (the most comprehensively humanitarian-law-origin-documenting single most important Geneva museum). Geneva is the most precisely "city of peace" single international diplomatic centre with the most UN-agency-headquartered and the most NGO-concentrated single European city.

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🇨🇭 Switzerland

Lausanne

Lausanne (population 145,000 city; 350,000 metropolitan area) is the capital of the Canton of Vaud and the fourth-largest city in Switzerland, on the northern shore of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) at 450–600m altitude, built on three hills rising from the lake with the Alps (Mont Blanc: 4,808m; the Dents du Midi: 3,257m; the Grammont ridge above Montreux: 2,172m) visible to the south across the lake. Lausanne has two unique international identities: it is the Olympic Capital of the world (the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been headquartered in Lausanne since 1915; 50+ international sports federations are based in Lausanne or the wider Lake Geneva region; the Olympic Museum on the Ouchy lakeside is the most visited museum in Switzerland); and it is the city of the Federal Supreme Court (the highest court in Switzerland, permanently established in Lausanne since 1875 — the only Swiss federal institution not in Bern). The Lausanne Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Lausanne — the finest Gothic cathedral in Switzerland, built 1175–1275; Pope Gregory X consecrated it in 1275; the only Swiss cathedral that still maintains the tradition of the 'Guet' (the Night Watch), a tradition since the 13th century where a town crier calls the hours from the cathedral belfry at 22:00–02:00 every night). The Lavaux (the UNESCO-listed terraced vineyards between Lausanne and Montreux, 800 years old, climbing the steep lakeside hillsides above Lake Geneva). Best months: May–October.

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🇨🇭 Switzerland

Lucerne

Lucerne (Luzern in German; population 85,000 in the city proper, 430,000 in the metropolitan area) is the most visited city in central Switzerland and one of the most perfectly situated cities in Europe — at the western end of Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee — the 'Lake of the Four Forest Cantons': the original Swiss confederacy of 1291 was formed by the three forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden around this lake; it is the most historically significant body of water in Swiss history), overlooked by the Alps and the two iconic peaks of Mount Pilatus (2,132m) and the Rigi (1,798m). Lucerne was founded by Benedictine monks in 750 CE (the monastery of Saint Leodegar — now the Lucerne Cathedral) and joined the Swiss Confederation in 1332 (one of the earliest member cantons). The Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrücke — 1333 CE: the oldest surviving wooden covered bridge in Europe (partially rebuilt after the 1993 fire; the original 14th-century sections are preserved); the interior roof panels contain 17th-century paintings depicting Swiss history) and the Dying Lion of Lucerne (Löwendenkmal — the 1820 sandstone lion carved directly into the rock face, commemorating the Swiss Guards who died defending King Louis XVI of France in the Tuileries Palace massacre of August 10, 1792) are two of the most famous monuments in Europe. The Swiss Transport Museum (Verkehrshaus der Schweiz — the largest museum in Switzerland, dedicated to transport history across all modes) and the Richard Wagner Museum (in the composer's residence at Tribschen, where Wagner lived 1866–1872 and composed Siegfried and Götterdämmerung) add cultural depth to the extraordinary natural and architectural setting. Best months: May–October.

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🇨🇭 Switzerland

Zurich

Zurich (Zürich; population 437,000 in the city, 1.41 million in the Greater Zurich Area; the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the Canton of Zurich; at the northwestern end of Lake Zurich (the Zürichsee) where the Limmat River flows north from the lake through the city to join the Glatt River and ultimately the Rhine: the city sits at 408 m above sea level with the first snow of the Alps visible on the distant mountain horizon; 280 km north of Geneva and 90 km northeast of Bern (the federal capital)) is the financial capital of Switzerland (the Swiss Bankers' Association headquarters, the Swiss Exchange (SIX Swiss Exchange — the most important derivatives exchange in Europe), the two largest Swiss banks (UBS and Credit Suisse (now merged with UBS after the March 2023 emergency acquisition)) and approximately 400 banks in total operating within the Zurich financial centre — the most concentrated per-capita banking sector in the world after the City of London) and the city with the most consistently high quality-of-life rankings of any city in the world (Zurich has ranked first or second in the Mercer Global Quality of Living Survey every year from 2000 to 2024, the most sustained quality-of-life record in the history of the survey). Zurich is a city defined by the extraordinary intellectual density of its exiles: Albert Einstein (who worked at the ETH Zurich from 1912 to 1914 and wrote his first comprehensive account of the General Theory of Relativity while in Zurich); James Joyce (who lived in Zurich from 1915 to 1919 and again from 1940 until his death on January 13, 1941, and who wrote the majority of his novel Ulysses (published 1922 in Paris) in Zurich, where he is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery); Vladimir Lenin (who lived in exile in Zurich from February 1916 to April 1917 and departed on the "sealed train" (the German-arranged passage through the German Empire in a sealed railway car to St Petersburg (Petrograd) on April 9, 1917 — the most consequential railway journey in the 20th century: Lenin's return to Russia to lead the October Revolution)) and Richard Wagner (who lived in Zurich from 1849 to 1858 in political exile from Germany (after supporting the Dresden Revolution of 1849) and composed the entire libretto of the Ring of the Nibelungen cycle (the "Ring" — the four-opera cycle "Das Rheingold", "Die Walküre", "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung") and the score of "Das Rheingold", "Die Walküre" and substantial portions of "Siegfried" during his Zurich exile, making Zurich the creative birthplace of the most ambitious single work in the history of Western classical music). The Zurich Reformation (the Protestant Reformation was launched in Zurich on January 1, 1519 by the priest Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) from the pulpit of the Grossmünster cathedral (the twin-towered Romanesque cathedral that dominates the Limmat riverbank): Zwingli's Zurich Reformation was the most radical of the three main Reformation streams (more radical than Luther's in its rejection of images, music and ceremony), and it was from Zurich that the Reformed (Calvinist) theological tradition spread to Geneva (under Calvin), to the Netherlands, to Scotland (under John Knox) and ultimately to New England (the Puritan emigration) — making Zurich the city from which the most internationally influential Reformation tradition originated.

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