Bern was founded in 1191 on a defensible loop of the Aare and rebuilt in sandstone after the fire of 1405 — which is why the whole old town is UNESCO-listed. Three days here trace 800 years: Zähringer walls, Reformation pulpits, federal politics and Einstein's desk.
Switzerland's largest late-Gothic church, begun 1421 by Matthäus Ensinger and finished only in 1893. The Last Judgement portal keeps 234 original figures — the sole Bernese sculpture that survived the 1528 Reformation iconoclasm. Tower: 344 steps.
The Gothic town hall of 1406–1417 has housed Bernese government for six centuries and still seats the cantonal parliament. Outside stands the Vennerbrunnen of 1542, a banner-bearer fountain marking the four city quarters that mustered Bern's militia.
Bern's second city gate, built 1256 when the town expanded west, rebuilt 1641–44 and used as a jail until 1897. Its position marks the medieval wall line that later became Marktgasse — proof of how the city grew in three westward leaps.
The Ogre Fountain of 1546 by Hans Gieng shows a giant devouring children — read variously as Saturn, a Carnival figure or an antisemitic caricature tied to Bern's 1294 blood-libel expulsion. One of eleven surviving 16th-century Renaissance fountains.
Hans Wilhelm Auer's 1894–1902 parliament building, its dome mosaic bearing the motto 'Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno'. Bern became federal seat in 1848; the Nationalrat chamber fresco depicts the Rütli meadow founding myth of 1291.
The second-floor flat where Albert Einstein lived 1903–1905 while a patent clerk, and wrote the special relativity paper of his 'annus mirabilis'. Furnished to period with original letters; the third floor gives a biographical exhibit.
André Lambert's 1894 castle-styled museum holds the Burgundian tapestries seized from Charles the Bold after Bern's victories at Grandson and Murten in 1476 — the richest medieval spoils hoard in Europe. Einstein Museum sits in the same building.
The church of 1341 stands on the ruins of the Zähringer castle destroyed in 1268 — the exact spot where Berchtold V founded the town in 1191. The Nydeggbrücke of 1844 was Bern's first high-level stone crossing of the Aare gorge.
The riverside artisans' district below the old town, historically home to raftsmen, tanners and washerwomen, who spoke Mattenenglisch — a syllable-scrambling secret argot. Flood marks from 1999 and 2005 are cut into the house walls.
The 1746–52 city palace of Hieronymus von Erlach, built by Albrecht Stürler in French Baroque — the grandest patrician house in Bern and now the mayor's official residence. Junkerngasse was the aristocratic street of the ancien régime oligarchy.
Founded 1879, the oldest art museum in Switzerland with a permanent collection. In 2014 it inherited the Cornelius Gurlitt bequest of some 1,500 works — a hoard assembled by a Nazi-era dealer, still under provenance research.
Bern's 1863 garden cemetery holds Hermann Hesse's publisher and several federal councillors, laid out as a Romantic park. From nearby Kirchenfeldbrücke of 1883, the Aare loop shows exactly why Berchtold V picked this peninsula.