Bern

The Old Town keeps the street plan laid out after Duke Berchtold V of Zähringen founded the city in 1191, and its long rows of sandstone houses have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983. Their ground floors form the Lauben, some six kilometres of covered arcades along Spitalgasse, Marktgasse, Kramgasse, Gerechtigkeitsgasse and Postgasse, so that the shops and cafés of the main streets are reached under cover in any weather. Down the middle of these streets stand eleven painted figure fountains of the 16th century: the Zähringer Fountain on Kramgasse with its armoured bear, the Justice Fountain on Gerechtigkeitsgasse and, on Kornhausplatz, the Kindlifresser, an ogre devouring a child.

The Zytglogge, the clock tower in the middle of the Old Town, was the city's western gate in the early 13th century and was rebuilt as a clock tower after a fire in 1405. Its astronomical dial on the Kramgasse side shows the day, the month, the sign of the zodiac and the phase of the moon. A few minutes before each hour strikes, the figures beneath the dial begin to move: a rooster crows, a jester rings his bells and a procession of bears turns, and then a gilded knight high on the tower strikes the bell with his hammer.

The Münster, Bern's late-Gothic cathedral, was begun in 1421 and took more than four centuries to finish: its tower was completed only in 1893, and at just over 100 metres it is the tallest church tower in Switzerland. Over the main portal, the carved and painted Last Judgement sets the saved on one side and the damned on the other. A spiral staircase climbs the tower to its viewing galleries, from where the view runs over the Old Town's roofs and the loop of the Aare to the Bernese Alps, with the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau on a clear day.

The Federal Palace (Bundeshaus), completed in 1902 under a green dome, houses both chambers of the Swiss parliament and the Federal Council, the seven-member government. From the Bundesterrasse behind it, the view drops to the Aare and the Marzili and, on clear days, carries to the Alps. The Bundesplatz in front of the palace, framed by the palace and the Swiss National Bank, has 26 water jets set into its paving, one for each canton, and on market days the stalls of the city's market spread over the square and the neighbouring Bärenplatz.

Albert Einstein lived at Kramgasse 49 from 1903 to 1905, while he worked at the federal patent office, and the papers he published in 1905, among them the special theory of relativity, took shape in those years. The Einsteinhaus keeps the second-floor flat where he lived with his wife Mileva Marić and their infant son Hans Albert, with an exhibition on his life on the floor above.

At the Old Town's eastern tip, the Nydegg bridge crosses the Aare to the Bear Park (BärenPark), where Bern's heraldic animals live in an open enclosure running down the steep bank to the water, beside the old bear pit. A short way downstream, the low Untertor bridge, the oldest of the city's bridges, leads back to the Nydegg quarter. From the bear park, the steep Aargauerstalden climbs to the Rosengarten, a rose garden on the hill opposite with the classic view across the river to the Old Town's roofs and the Münster tower. Back down, over the Untertor bridge and up through the Nydegg, the loop makes a walk of about an hour and a half.

The Aare reaches Bern from Lake Thun, clear, cold and green with the fine glacial silt it carries down from the Bernese Oberland. Below the Federal Palace, on the riverbank of the Marzili district, the Marzili baths are the city's classic open-air bath, with lawns and pools beside the river and the Aare itself for those who swim. On summer afternoons the river carries a steady stream of swimmers down to the Marzili, their clothes packed in an Aaresack, a waterproof bag that also floats.

Across the Kirchenfeld bridge from the Old Town, Helvetiaplatz gathers several of Bern's museums: the Bern Historical Museum in its castle-like building, which also houses the Einstein Museum on the physicist's life and work, and the Alpine Museum of Switzerland. Around the corner, the Natural History Museum keeps Barry, the Saint Bernard who rescued travellers on the Great St Bernard Pass. On the Old Town side, near the station, the Kunstmuseum Bern on Hodlerstrasse holds Swiss art from Ferdinand Hodler to Albert Anker. On the city's eastern edge, the Zentrum Paul Klee, Renzo Piano's building of three steel waves set in farmland, opened in 2005 and holds the world's largest Paul Klee collection, the work of a painter who grew up in Bern.

Bern eats on the German-speaking side of the Röstigraben, and its own version of rösti, fried with bacon, is on menus all over the Old Town. The city's festive dish is the Bärner Platte, a platter of smoked pork, sausages, ham, beef, tongue and bacon served with sauerkraut, beans and potatoes, eaten mostly in the cold months and often in the vaulted cellar restaurants beneath the arcades. Toblerone, the triangular chocolate bar, was created in Bern in 1908 by Theodor Tobler and Emil Baumann.

Bern HB, the main station and the second-busiest in Switzerland, lies at the western end of the Old Town, about ten minutes' walk from the Zytglogge. Bernmobil's trams and buses fan out from the station to every district: trams 6 and 7 cross the Kirchenfeld bridge to Helvetiaplatz, bus 12 runs through the Old Town past the Bear Park to the Zentrum Paul Klee, and tram 9 goes south to Wabern, where a funicular climbs the Gurten, the city's own hill. InterCity trains of the Swiss rail network reach Zurich in 56 minutes, Basel in 55 minutes and Geneva in about 1 hour 45 minutes, and international trains run through Bern to Milan by the Lötschberg and Simplon tunnels and to Germany by way of Basel.