Description of the attraction
If you go from the Bernese casino across the Are river along the Kirchenfeldbrücke bridge, you can go to the unusual building of the Historical Museum, reminiscent of an alpine castle. There is a monumental fountain in front of it.
This museum is dedicated to the history of the city and the canton of Bern. The first Historical Museum of Bern, the collection of which was later transported to Zurich and became the basis of the exposition of the Swiss National Museum, was founded in 1882. In 1892-1894, the present building of the museum was built especially for his collection on the Helvetsiyaplatz square. Two architects worked on it - Eduard von Rodt and Adolf Tische. In 1954, a branch of the Berne Historical Museum was opened in Oberhofen Castle. It ceased operations in 2009 when the building on Helvetiaplaz was expanded with an extension of an additional exhibition hall.
The Historical Museum of Bern has extensive material on the ancient history of the canton of Bern. It also contains huge ethnographic and numismatic collections. It is worth mentioning the valuable Burgundy tapestries that became the property of the city during the Burgundian Wars. One of the attractions of the museum are fragments of the so-called Bernese sculpture, which were discovered in 1986.
The museum has about 500 thousand exhibits. Among them is a collection of oriental antiquities by the famous collector Henry Moser, which he donated to the museum in 1914.
In 2005, the museum opened a temporary exhibition dedicated to the life and work of Albert Einstein. The organizers themselves did not even imagine how much excitement this exposition would cause. Therefore, after a while, she was simply transferred to the Albert Einstein house-museum.
