![]() When the Reformation came to town in 1528, all this was swept away by iconoclasts who believed that images distracted worshippers from focusing on God. The church was originally adorned by 26 separate little chapels and altars dedicated to Mary and the various saints. During the Reformation, religious icons were destroyed by Protestants. They also gave local artists something to work on after the Reformation deprived them of their most important patron, the Catholic Church.īern’s 15th-century cathedral, Catholic-turned-Protestant, is capped by a 330-foot-tall tower, the highest in Switzerland. In the 16th century, the city commissioned many colorful fountains to brighten up the gray cityscape, to show off the town’s wealth, and to remind citizens of great local heroes and events. ![]() Today these are elongated “squares,” popular for markets and outdoor cafés - the top places to be seen in the evening.īuildings new and old throughout the city are a uniform gray, from the creamy Bernese sandstone, quarried nearby. To stroll through the town is to go rohren (piping).Īs Bern grew over the centuries, each of its successive walls and moats were torn down, providing vast, people-friendly swaths of land. The local slang for the corridor under these arcades is Rohr (German for pipe). This is my kind of shopping town: Prices are so high, there’s no danger of buying. The lanes are lined with three miles of arcades, providing lots of shopping opportunities. Crossing the river from the bear pits I enter the old town - a delight to explore on foot. Bern is packed into a peninsula created by a tight bend in the river.
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