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.
James Blake Wiener29.05.2025On May 29, 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland met a tragic fate in the freezing waters of Canada's St. Lawrence River. A heavy fog obscured visibility, leading to a catastrophic collision with the Norwegian collier Storstad. The disaster claimed 1,012 lives. Among those aboard were four Swiss citizens en route to Liverpool from Quebec City.
Marc Ribeli27.05.2025In 1975, the SBB (Swiss Federal Railways) opened its first new route in a long time: the just under eight-kilometre-long Heitersberg line between Limmattal and Lenzburg. The new inter-city Swiss Express train became an eye-catching feature on this new stretch of railway.
Lionel Gauthier08.04.2025Alfred Bertrand (1856-1924) and Emilio Balli (1855-1934) embarked on their round-the-world trip on 1 August 1878 in Marseille. They were among the first five Swiss tourists to circumnavigate the globe.
