Mattia Mahon25.04.2024In April 1974, one of Europe's oldest dictatorships collapsed in Portugal. In Switzerland, people were worried about the future of Portugal. Not least because of the fragile political balance in southern Europe.
Franziska Rogger23.04.2024Born in Russia, Ida Hoff became one of the first women to attend university in Switzerland around 1900. In addition to pursuing a career in medicine, she was a staunch advocate of women’s rights, guided by her feminist conscience and a penchant for irreverence. She found an outlet for the latter at the second Swiss Congress for Women's Interests in 1921, where she wittily subjected Ferdinand Hodler’s painting “The Day” to a fresh new feminist interpretation.
James Blake Wiener15.04.2024Over a century after her dramatic demise, the Titanic lingers omnipresent in the human imagination. The stories of the Titanic’s Swiss staff and passengers are a rich kaleidoscope of a maritime disaster and an era on the precipice of tremendous change.
Thomas Weibel11.04.2024For generations, the clanking sound of bins being emptied was an everyday morning sound in Switzerland. The noise came from the hot-dip galvanised steel rubbish bins designed by resourceful Zurich entrepreneur Jakob Ochsner.
Noëmi Crain Merz09.04.2024The canton of Basel-Stadt had to wait a long time to be represented on the Federal Council. After the election of Hans-Peter Tschudi in 1959, it was 64 years before the next candidate from the city won a seat on the national executive body. Both events were cause for widespread celebration.
Jean-Luc Rickenbacher03.04.2024The Vigezzina-Centovalli Railway crosses 83 bridges and goes through 31 tunnels. It connects Switzerland to Italy and is the most direct route between the Gotthard and Simplon lines. The legendary narrow gauge railway in southern Switzerland celebrates its centenary in 2023/24.
Helmut Stalder28.03.2024Lenin’s explosive ideology, which would go on to shake the world, was partly concocted in Bern and Zurich. Yet he considered his Swiss comrades social romantics and opportunists.
Kurt Messmer12.03.2024Swiss cities such as Lucerne experienced an epochal transformation around 1900. Its medieval centre was expanded to include prestigious residential and commercial buildings, stations, postal and administrative offices, school buildings, hotels and villas. However, architecturally this modernisation bore the hallmarks of the past. Time for a virtual tour of Lucerne.