Barbara Basting09.03.2023Alexandre Calame is considered one of the fathers of Alpine landscape painting. And it all started, figuratively speaking, with a storm.
Gabriel Heim09.02.2023German theologian Carl August Wildenhahn documented his journey through 19th century Switzerland with humorous observations and comic strip-style pictures.
Julia Hübner01.02.2023It's hard to imagine now, but it actually happened in the winter of 1963. Lake Zurich froze over entirely. The authorities opened the ice on 1 February, and the last public festival on the lake began.
Michèle Seehafer09.01.2023The Baroque period saw increasing numbers of female artists begin to question the social structures of the age. The stories of Anna Waser and Maria Sibylla Merian demonstrate how these female artists fully bore comparison with their male contemporaries.
Michael van Orsouw27.07.2022Opinions were divided on naturopath Arnold Rikli. He delivered his holistic form of treatment, which involved bathing in the nude, at a sanatorium he had set up himself. Not in Switzerland, but in what is now Slovenia. The Monte Verità counterculture group was inspired, ultimately, by many of Rikli’s ideas and practices.
Guido Balmer13.07.2022Our cousins to the north and west boast hundreds of them: tree-lined avenues. Rows of trees are a defining feature of many French and German cities and rural landscapes. Here in Switzerland, avenues have never had the same significance. But they’ve always been here, though. One particular avenue of trees has recently been crowned Switzerland’s “Landscape of the Year 2022”.
Noëmi Crain Merz22.06.2022Gotthelf’s novel "The Black Spider" explores themes of greed, conflict and the power of the plague. But the author also voices his frustration over unchecked forest clearance in his home canton of Bern.
Pascale Meyer23.05.2022Around 150 years ago, things were looking grim for Switzerland’s flora and fauna. Then two Basel academics seized the initiative, and set about bringing to life their vision of an unspoiled, primordial landscape in the Engadin. In 1914, the first national park in Central Europe was opened in the Val Cluozza.
