Anuska Merz07.04.2026The Lindenhof hill in Zurich was the site of a royal palace from around the year 850. Carolingian kings and rulers of the Holy Roman Empire regularly spent time there as they travelled around the realm. The Lindenhof experienced what was perhaps its finest moment in 1055.
Nicolas Kessler03.03.2026The mass transport of mail by airplane has long been a central component of global logistics networks. But it experienced a difficult beginning in Switzerland. Moreover, the reasons behind the country’s move to airmail are not what you would expect.
Noah Businger13.01.2026Unlike today, wars were almost constantly raging on the borders of the Old Swiss Confederacy in the 17th and 18th centuries. As well as representing the culmination of ongoing conflicts, this warfare opened up lucrative new lines of business for people like Thomas Massner.
Thomas Weibel11.11.2025Street signposting in Switzerland takes the form of white writing on a blue background. But not in Bern’s old town, where the street signs are red, green, yellow, black and white. The City of Bern inherited this bright design from the French military campaign in 1798.
Christian Rohr04.11.2025Archaeologist Jakob Wiedmer’s marriage to Wengen hotel owner Marie Stern exposed him to the tourist boom in the Bernese Oberland during the Belle Époque. He expressed his disapproval in his novel Flut, which led to the couple selling the hotel and moving away.
Helmut Stalder30.10.2025There was a public fascination in the 19th century with the idea of building a railway to the top of the Jungfrau. A competition launched in the mid-1880s prompted an animated response from the country’s engineers, with each one trying to outdo the other. Adolf Guyer-Zeller cherry-picked their ideas and got rid of the competition. He also opened up the mountain to mass tourism.
Andrej Abplanalp10.07.2025Guillaume Henri Dufour was a humane military general and an innovative cartographer. But he was also a mobility pioneer, a talented engineer and a reluctant politician.
