Things to do
8-
Bern Minster
The tallest church in Switzerland, begun in 1421 and not finished until 1893, with a Last Judgement over the main door of 234 figures that survived the Reformation because it was outside. The tower is 344 steps.
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Bern Old Town
A grid of sandstone arcades and eleven sixteenth-century fountains on a spur in the river, almost unchanged in plan since the fifteenth century. The whole quarter is on the UNESCO list and it is still the working centre of the city.
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Zytglogge
The clock tower that was the city's western gate in 1218, carrying an astronomical clock of 1530 with a moving figure show that runs four minutes before each hour. The mechanism is shown on a tour up the tower.
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BaerenPark
The bear enclosure on the far bank of the Aare, kept since 1513 in a pit and moved in 2009 into a hillside run down to the river. The bear is the city's emblem and it is on the arms, the fountains and the flag.
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Bellevue Palace
The hotel of 1913 next to the parliament building, owned by the federal government and used to house visiting heads of state, with a terrace over the Aare looking at the Bernese Alps. The public can book the rest of it.
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Einstein House
The second-floor flat on Kramgasse where Einstein lived from 1903 to 1905 and wrote the special relativity paper while working as a patent clerk, furnished as it was. It takes half an hour and it is the right half hour.
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Rosengarten
A rose garden on the hill above the bear park with two hundred and twenty rose varieties and the standard view of the old town inside its river loop. It was the municipal cemetery until 1913.
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Zentrum Paul Klee
A Renzo Piano building of 2005 on the eastern edge of the city, three steel waves in a field, holding four thousand works by Klee, which is about forty per cent of his output and the largest holding of any single artist anywhere.