A «Museum Castle»

The Historisches Museum in Bern was built by the Neuchâtel architect André Lambert in 1894. The building was originally conceived as the «Landesmuseum» (The Swiss National Museum). The architect took as the model for his design not only building forms of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, but also various historic castles, whose influence can be clearly seen in the building. The revivalist building style is also intended to recall the period from which the museum's most important collections derive.

After the choice of Zürich as the site of the Landesmuseum, only the main building of the original «plan for a National Museum in Bern» was erected in the end. It now houses what is Switzerland's second largest historic museum, combining under one roof one of the country's most important ethnographic collections together with the Bernese historical collections from prehistory to the present day. The museum's holdings comprise some 250,000 objects.The Burgundian tapestries, the Königsfeld Diptych, the bronze hydria from Grächwil, as well as a series of ethnographic and numismatic collections, enjoy international fame.

The Historisches Museum in Bern is supported by the Canton, the City and the Municipal authority, and also enjoys support through the regional cultural conference of the joint local authorities.