I think you already know that we try to spend our weekends actively. We both sit way too much behind the screen during the week, so we take weekends as an opportunity to go out of our apartment and explore. And I don't think there can ever be too many posts about castles, so today I will take you with me to explore another one 🙂
Burgdorf is located in the canton of Bern about 2.5 hours drive from our home. It is built on a hill high above the river Emme. The castle is situated in the middle of the city of Burgdorf, and to get there you will walk up the hill through the charming streets with several restaurants and cute shops.
We left early in the morning as we needed to pick up our friends on the way. They live nearby, so we asked them to join us. They didn't visit any castle in Switzerland before, so it was about the time to change it!
When we finally arrived in the town it was already lunchtime, so we started our tour with lunch in one of the local restaurants. With our tummies full and happy we walked in the direction of the castle.
Burgdorf castle as we know it today was built in 1200. However, the history of the castle dates back to the 8th century as per a legend. The legend has it that a dangerous dragon and a maiden lived in the rock on the hill. When two brothers managed to defeat the dragon they built a castle on that rock. Legend
The origins of the castle are not known with certainty, but it is surely older than 800 years.
On the way to Burgdorf you will see the castle towering above the colorful houses. It is actually visible from almost every corner in the town.
It didn't take us long to get to the main gate. The castle was so much larger than I expected.
Burgdorf is surrounded by a moat. The only way to the castle is through a drawbridge. Today, it is a steel construction, but in the past it was made out of wood. The original drawbridge was built in 1565, but it lost its function in the 18th century and was replaced by the current construction. It was very easy to pull up the drawbridge and defend the castle - it only took one guard to do this task.
The castle walls look like a patchwork. You can see that it was not built at once, but that the construction took many years to complete. The newest parts of the castle were built at the end of the 18th century.
As Burgdorf is situated on top of a hill we don't need to climb a tower to enjoy the views. No worries though, we will climb the tower anyway, but we like to enjoy as many views as we can 🙂
The church in the back was built at the same time as the castle. The castle as well as the church indicated that Burgdorf would become the center of the region.
Let's enter the castle!
In 1200, the Dukes of Zähringen founded the city of Burgdorf and built a medieval castle. It didn't stay in their possession for long as the family died out less than 20 years later.
During their rule, the Zähringens expanded their wealth to various parts of Germany and Switzerland. Today, there are 12 cities that were founded by this family.
After that time the castle was owned by the Kyburg family. This family had a long history in Switzerland and a lot of influence at that time. They built another castle in the Eastern part of Switzerland called Kyburg. This castle is only 30 minutes drive from our home and we take all our visitors there. It's a great place for family trips.
The Kyburgs lost a war in the 14th century, and were forced to pass the castle to the city of Bern which is in its possession until today. Bern finished the construction of the castle to its current appearance. The city didn't do much with the castle until Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi moved there to run his school and do this work.
In 2020, the castle was reopened for public with its museum, restaurant and a youth hostel. History
The newest part of the castle is the entrance tower (on the left). It dates back to the end of the 18th century.
Usually, there is one gate which leads you directly to the main castle. The castle complex of Burgdorf has three gates that you need to pass to get to the courtyard.
The palace has the coat of arms of Bern painted on the façade. As many things in this region, the history of the coat of arms of Bern is linked to the family Zähringen. Duke Berthold V of Zähringen chose the bear as it was the first animal his hunt met in the forest that was to be chopped down for the new city. Some years ago I was sad to learn that the last bear in the Swiss Alps was killed in 1904.
Now, we are ready to cross the last gate to the courtyard...
The courtyard is a large open space with a spacious restaurant and the entrance to the hostel/museum. We already had lunch, but the tables outside of the restaurant looked inviting, so we stopped by for a cup of coffee.
From our table we had a nice view of the castle...
On the right side you can see the glass door which is the entrance. The entrance fee is CHF 14 per person and it includes the tour of the museum as well as the tower. There is no audio guide provided, but you can scan QR codes in each room to learn some interesting facts about the place and each part of the exposition.
It was a beautiful sunny day and we enjoyed sitting outside. You would think that we should be able to see the Alps as we were in the mountainous region, but the entire range was on the opposite side of the castle, so we didn't see them, but our view was not too shabby at all.
We entered the castle and it was really warm inside. I asked the guy selling the tickets if it's warm enough inside, so that I would leave my jacket in a locker. He confirmed that it should be fine, and I took off my jacket before I entered the exposition. I managed to walk through three rooms before going back to pick my up jacket as it was freezing cold! 🙂 I don't think that the guy entered the exposition that day...
We had no idea what to expect inside of the castle and I must admit that we were surprised with the expositions. There were some bizarre artifacts and rather scary things placed in some rooms.
The first part was the ethnological collection which showed displays in four colors: Blue, red, green and yellow.
The blue display focused on the afterlife in various parts of the world. In Switzerland, it was common to have an open coffin at home for three days, so that relatives could come and pray for the soul. Until recently, it was done in Slovakia too.
The red display was a bit chaotic, but it showed passions in life.
The green display showed characters with different emotions.
The yellow display showed the products that were made in Switzerland and I was not so sure why there was bananas placed there as well 🙂
From the ethnological collection we walked to the weapon collection. It showed development of various weapons over the centuries. That must have been the favorite part of my husband. I only walked through the room quickly on the way to the tower.
The wooden planks leading to the tower were wobbly and one of our friends refused to walk to the other side. We tried to explain to her that many people pass by here every day but she wouldn't listen, so she stayed and waited for us.
Those who were brave to walk through this place enjoyed the views 🙂
The tower had several floors. I enjoyed this part with several flag and wooden pillars with inscriptions.
The staircase was steep but wide, so it was easy to climb.
And we reached the top of the tower! When we arrived we were confused as all windows were closed and we were disappointed that we wouldn't see anything. But then I noticed the signs on the windows saying that we can open them, but we should leave them closed once we leave. We opened all six windows and started taking photos.
The layout of the castle is complicated and we found ourselves walking through the same rooms more than once or in the wrong order 🙂 I believe we should have visited the gold room before the tower, but well it is what it is.
This room showed the history of gold and its usage as jewelry and money. There were bars of different substances such as wood, marble, iron and gold that we could pick up, and let me tell you that gold is very heavy! I had no idea...
Here we have different items which carry gold in their name...
We learned that 1 kg of gold was smaller than a chocolate bar 🙂
Gold leaves from Egypt...
And the biggest piece of gold ever found in Switzerland. The newspaper is from 1997!
There were not many traditional items that you would usually expect in a castle except of this porcelain collection.
This room was dedicated to brave women who achieved amazing things.
And here are some personal items that were used for their achievements.
And now we are coming to the personal collection of a photographer Heinrich Schiffmann. He got a terminal disease at very young age and decided to travel the world during his last months on earth. He managed to collect thousands of items from his travels most of which we can see in this collection.
This coin meant a lot to him. He received it from a woman who told him that one day he will have much more than that. At that time he didn't have anything and he started to carry to coin with him. Later, he indeed had much more.
Some pieces simply couldn't be explained...
Before we left, there was something made out of the entrance stickers on the wall. I say 'something' as we all saw something else there. To me, it was a girl with her hair in a bun. To one of our friends, it was a bunny - well, I truly don't see the bunny there 🙂
At the end we agreed it was a girl and started to build her leg using our stickers.
And the best for the last...
My husband will remain a child in his heart forever. This armor was heavy and it smelled so bad, but it didn't keep him from putting it on. The helmet kept falling and he couldn't breath in it, but he is happy with the photo and this is all what counts 🙂 There were a couple of boys waiting for us to finish and they didn't seem to be very happy because it apparently took us too long.
I must admit that this castle was so different to any other castles that we visited, but we liked it anyway.
We left as soon as we finished our tour as we wanted to avoid traffic, but we were not so lucky and it took us almost four hours to get home.
I hope you have enjoyed our day.
Thank you for reading!
Cheers,
Martina