The story of this place
Founded in 1191 by Berchtold V, Duke of Zähringen, Bern grew along a loop of the Aare River into one of Europe's best-preserved medieval cities, its six kilometres of arcaded sandstone streets earning UNESCO World Heritage status in 1983. At its heart the Zytglogge clock tower, built around 1218 as a city gate, gained its astronomical clock and mechanical figures in 1530. A young patent clerk named Albert Einstein lived a few steps away on Kramgasse and later said the tower helped inspire his thought experiments on time that led to the 1905 theory of special relativity.