Nydegg Church & Nydegg Bridge
On a rocky spur above the Aare's tightest bend rises the slender sandstone Nydegg Church, built over the ruins of the castle where Bern itself began. Beside it, the soaring stone Nydegg Bridge of 1844 leaps the river gorge toward the bears on the far shore.
Su questo luogo
The Nydegg marks the eastern tip of Bern's old town, the narrow neck of the peninsula where the whole city was born. Around 1190 Duke Berchtold the Fifth of Zaehringen, founder of Bern, raised a castle crowned with four corner towers here to guard the only river crossing, but the fiercely independent citizens razed it between 1266 and 1273. On its foundations they built the Nydegg Church from 1341 to 1346, its tower rebuilt in its present form in 1571 after a fire, and after the Reformation the emptied nave even served for a time as a warehouse for barrels and timber. Just alongside stands the Nydeggbruecke, the great stone arch flung across the gorge between 1840 and 1844, whose central span was for fifty years the widest on the European mainland. Together the modest church and the mighty bridge tell the story of how a fortified frontier settlement grew into the graceful capital of Switzerland.
Fatti principali
- 46 metres — Span of the bridge's central stone arch, the widest in Europe until the 1890s
- 1266 year — Bern's citizens began razing the Nydegg castle, later raising the church over its ruins
- 25 metres — Height of the Nydegg Bridge deck above the turquoise Aare below
📍 Burgtreppe, 3011, Bern