Explore Bern

The Zytglogge is a medieval tower on Kramgasse in Bern's old town, built in the early 13th century as a gate and later used as a prison and a clock tower. A few minutes before each hour, the figures of its astronomical clock move, among them a parade of bears and a crowing rooster; the clockwork inside is shown on guided tours.

The Einstein House is the flat at Kramgasse 49 where Albert Einstein lived with Mileva Marić and their son Hans from 1903 to 1905, the period in which he wrote the 1905 papers on relativity and light quanta. The second-floor rooms are furnished as in his time, and an exhibition on the floor above covers his life and work.

The Federal Palace is the seat of the Swiss parliament and government, a complex just over 300 metres long whose domed parliament building on the Bundesplatz was completed in 1902 to plans by Hans Wilhelm Auer. Guided tours of the domed hall and the council chambers run on set days and are booked online; during sessions, debates can be followed from the public gallery.

Bern Minster is a Reformed church in the Gothic style in Bern's old town, begun in 1421; its tower was completed only in 1893 and stands 100.6 metres tall. The main portal shows the Last Judgement in carved figures by Erhart Küng, and a staircase in the tower leads up to viewing galleries above the old town and the Aare.

The Kunstmuseum Bern opened in 1879 in a neo-Renaissance building by Eugen Stettler on Hodlerstrasse, at the edge of the old town. Its collection spans eight centuries, from Italian Trecento panels to Swiss painters such as Ferdinand Hodler and Albert Anker and modern works by Picasso and Paul Klee, and since 2014 it has held the Gurlitt bequest.

The Bern Historical Museum on Helvetiaplatz occupies a castle-style building by André Lambert from 1894, first designed as a candidate for the Swiss National Museum. Its collections run from Stone Age, Celtic and Roman finds to Burgundian tapestries and the Henri Moser oriental collection, and it houses the Einstein Museum.

The Bear Park is an open-air enclosure on the slope between the Nydeggbrücke and the Aare, opened in 2009 beside the old Bärengraben bear pit at the eastern end of Bern's old town. Brown bears, the city's heraldic animal, live on its terraced grounds, run by the Dählhölzli zoo and seen from paths above and along the river.

The Rose Garden is a public park on the hill northeast of Bern's old town, laid out in 1913 on a former cemetery and planted with roses from 1917. Around 220 rose varieties, 200 kinds of iris and 28 of rhododendron grow around a pond with sculpture groups, and from its edge the view takes in the Aare bend, the old town roofs and the Minster.

The Zentrum Paul Klee is a museum on the eastern edge of Bern devoted to the painter Paul Klee, opened in 2005 in a building by Renzo Piano shaped as three steel-and-glass waves in the landscape. It holds about 40 percent of Klee's pictorial work, shown in changing selections and exhibitions, and includes the Creaviva studio for art workshops.