Thun

Thun sits where the Aare leaves its lake, twenty minutes from Bern, with the Bernese Alps filling the view south. It is the gateway to the Oberland and most people go straight through it on the way to Interlaken, which is a mistake.

The castle

Schloss Thun is the picture-book one: a square twelfth-century keep with four round corner towers and a red roof, built by the Zähringen dukes, standing over the town on a small hill.

It is now a museum covering the town’s history, and the climb into the towers gives the lake, the town and the Alps. The stair up to it from the market square is a covered wooden one, which is a pleasure in itself.

The street on two levels

Thun’s real oddity, and the thing you will not see anywhere else.

The Obere Hauptgasse is built with shops at street level and a second row of shops behind and above them — and the pavement for the upper row runs along the roofs of the lower. So the main street has two footpaths at different heights, one of them on top of the shops, with flower boxes and café tables on it.

It was a medieval solution to a steep, narrow site, and it survives intact.

The lake

Lake Thun is the larger of the two Oberland lakes, and the boats from the pier by the station are public transport covered by rail passes. Several are historic paddle steamers.

Along the shore: Schloss Oberhofen, with a tower standing in the water and a garden running down to it, and Schloss Spiez on its own peninsula among vineyards. Both are museums, both are reachable by boat, and either makes an afternoon.

The Beatus caves on the northern shore run a kilometre into the mountain past underground waterfalls, with a hermit’s cave at the entrance.

Schadau

Where the river leaves the lake stands the Schadau park, with a nineteenth-century château and the best single view in Thun — the water, the town, and the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau lined up behind.

In the park is the Thun Panorama, the oldest surviving circular panorama painting in the world: a 38-metre canvas of the town painted by Marquard Wocher between 1809 and 1814, shown in a purpose-built rotunda. It predates every other panorama still standing.

Getting there

• By train — Bern 20 minutes, Interlaken 25 minutes, Zurich about an hour and a half.
• By boat — from Interlaken West along the lake, about two hours, and much the better arrival.
• On foot — everything above except the lake castles is within fifteen minutes of the station.

When to go

Summer, when the boats run at full frequency and the town spends its evenings on the river. The Aare through Thun is a swimming river like the one in Bern, with the same warnings about current and exit points.

December brings a good Christmas market around the castle hill.

Thun is on the list of the ten most beautiful towns, at number four.