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Thun, Switzerland
Switzerland

Things to do in Thun

Why you should go

Ninety seconds on Thun

A town where the Aare leaves Lake Thun, with a twelfth-century castle keep on the hill and a main street whose pavements run along the roofs of the shops below. It is the gateway to the Bernese Oberland and most people pass through it. Staying is the better idea. The lake has castles on three of its shores, steamers that call at all of them, and the Niesen standing over the far end with the longest stairway in the world up its flank.

4 places on record

Things to do

4
  1. Schloss Oberhofen

    Schloss Oberhofen

    Castle · 1.5 hr

    A castle standing in the water on the north shore, thirteenth century with a Turkish smoking room added in the nineteenth, in an English park of exotic trees running down to the lake. The boat calls at its own pier.

  2. Thun Castle

    Thun Castle

    Castle · 1.5 hr

    A keep of about 1190 with four corner turrets on the hill above the town, holding the regional museum in the great hall and a stair to the roof that sees the whole lake and the Bernese Alps behind it.

  3. Lake Thun

    Lake · 3 hr

    A lake of forty-eight square kilometres with the Niesen at one end and Interlaken at the other, worked by paddle steamers including the Blueemlisalp of 1906. Castles stand at Thun, Oberhofen, Spiez and Hilterfingen.

  4. Niesen

    Viewpoint · 3.5 hr

    A pyramid at 2,362 metres at the south end of the lake, reached by a funicular of 1910 whose service stairway of 11,674 steps is the longest in the world and is open to a race one day a year.

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