Treasures of the past
Switzerland is the European country with the largest number of palafittic sites, prehistoric lake treasures. On the shores of lakes such as Neuchâtel, Zurich, Zug, Hallwil or Biel, you can discover the remains of these astonishing villages, combining floating houses or houses on stilts, with houses on dry land... which often took the form of artificial mounds. Rectangular in plan, often long and narrow, and sheltered under a broad thatched roof, these houses were made of planks (squared timber trunks) or half-timbering, the walls being made of interlaced branches and covered with cob. They were lined up in several rows and protected by wooden palisades, ditches and embankments. The remains and reconstructions at the Laténiumparc and Musée d'archéologie d'Hauterive are a must-see. The Celts and Helvetii established the first urban centers or oppida, divided into different quarters and fortified with powerful ramparts of earth, wood and stone. Remains can be found on the Enge peninsula in Bern. Then it was the turn of the Romans to brilliantly combine pragmatism, monumentality and domestic wealth, as demonstrated by the beautiful Gallo-Roman villa at Orbe-Boscéaz with its superb mosaics. And don't miss the Roman town of Augusta Raurica, with its thermal baths, underground fountain, the mighty retaining walls of its basilica and the remains of kilns used to make tiles from dried clay, many of which bear the legion's mark. Yes, in those days, the armed forces were also the leading construction companies!
Medieval power
The Carolingian era (8th-10th centuries) was a period of great renewal for Christian monastic architecture. TheAbbey of St. Gall is the most famous example. Its ideal, highly functional plan reveals a separation between east-sacred and west-profane, and two powerful towers flank the western facade of its church. These features can also be found in the beautiful convent of the Sisters in Müstair. The latter also boasts the country's largest collection of Romanesque frescoes, whose massive walls, semicircular arches and sculpted decorations were to spread throughout the country under the influence of religious orders. The abbey church at Romainmôtier is one of the great masterpieces of Swiss Romanesque, with its cross vaults supported by powerful pillars, as is the monastery at Muri and the church of Santa Maria di Castello in Mesocco, with its superb stone campanile and geminated bays. With its pointed arches, pointed vaults and slender but powerful buttresses, Gothic is vertical and airy. Superb stained glass windows, sculpted portals and ribbed vaults all bear witness to the richness of Gothic decoration. But few buildings were built ex nihilo, instead building on Carolingian and Romanesque foundations, creating a sumptuous blend of styles of which the cathedrals are the proudest representatives. Don't miss Lausanne's Notre-Dame Cathedral, Fribourg's Saint-Nicolas Cathedral or Chur Cathedral, with its beautiful nave alternating between powerful Romanesque pillars with elegantly sculpted capitals and Gothic vaulted ceilings. The same mix can be found in the astonishing Basilica of Notre-Dame de Valère, a rare example of a fortified church and proof that the Middle Ages were an eventful period, to say the least! This explains the presence of numerous fortified castles. These grew from simple isolated towers to mighty fortresses. The fortified city of Bellinzona, with its three castles and mighty ramparts following the rugged contours of the topography, is one of a kind, as is the legendary Chillon Castle, with its double face of fortress and princely Gothic palace. Growing cities also protect themselves behind impressive ramparts. Clock towers, town halls and guild houses adorn themselves in Gothic finery. A masonry first floor with arcades and half-timbered upper floors with oriel windows often characterize tall, narrow medieval houses. The villages of Stein-am-Rhein and Reggensberg are among the most picturesque in the country. Lucerne impresses with its astonishing wooden covered bridges and the Museggmauer, 850 m of perfectly preserved ramparts and towers. But it's of course the old town of Berne that stands out as the finest representative of the Swiss Middle Ages, with its long cobbled streets lined with arcades, its little squares adorned with fountains, its Rathaus with its facade of beautiful stone reliefs and its Käfigturn.
Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism
In the face of the omnipresent Gothic, the Renaissance is rather discreet in Switzerland. In the German-speaking part of the country, it's not uncommon to see corbels, turrets and gables with Gothic steps rubbing shoulders with elegant courtyards with Renaissance colonnades. This style is more prevalent in central and southern Switzerland, where the Italian influence is stronger. In Lucerne, the Palazzo Ritter and the Rathaus, with their rusticated facades, are reminiscent of Florentine Renaissance palaces. At a time when the Protestant Reformation had stripped Christian buildings of their decorative riches and replaced them with austere temples, Baroque was to become the weapon of ideological reconquest. Everywhere, buildings were constructed or rebuilt with curves and counter-curves, trompe-l'œil and an abundance of decoration in which stucco and gilding reigned supreme. Bulbous bell towers appear in the sky, and grand urban palaces redesign cities with their majestic ceremonial staircases leading to sumptuous courtyards. Among the masterpieces of the period, don't miss the Kloster Einsiedeln, with its sumptuous frescoes and paintings, and its intricately designed library, and the abundant library of the Abbey of St. Gall, with its marquetry parquet flooring and ceilings adorned with stucco and trompe-l'oeil. An ornamental overload on a par with rococo exuberance. The end of the eighteenth century saw a calmer period, with the refined forms of neoclassicism, notably seen in the "campagnes", large rural estates in the Lausanne countryside dominated by elegant mansions.
Bubbling 19th and early 20th century
The Industrial Revolution ushered in a period of incredible technical progress. Major cities were equipped with superb bridges, such as Geneva's Pont Saint-Antoine, the first suspension bridge to use steel cables. Markets and shopping arcades also succumbed to the siren calls of this metal architecture, as shown by the beautiful oriel roof of the Galerie Saint-François in Lausanne and the market halls in Montreux. This alliance of architecture and engineering culminates in the superb engineering structures that punctuate the new railroad lines, alternating between massive stone masonry structures and elegant metal silhouettes. The railroads also paved the way for the development of the first tourist resorts, populated by hotels and opulent villas. It was on the Vaud Riviera that this hotel architecture was to shine. Eugène Jost imagined the Caux Palace built on a 500 m-long terrace, alternating medieval watchtowers, Renaissance colonnades and traditional carved woodwork. But hotels are not the only ones to feature this astonishing historicist eclecticism, which can be found in both official buildings and grand bourgeois villas. The Palais Eynard in Geneva, with its neo-Palladian style culminating in an Ionic column façade, the Zurich Opera House with its neo-Baroque façade, the neo-Gothic Château des Crêtes in Montreux, the Manoir de Ban in Corsier-sur-Vevey with its fluted pilasters and neo-classical peristyle, and the neo-Renaissance Bundeshaus in Berne are all fine examples. At the same time, a Heimatstil style was developing, rooted in local and regional traditions and featuring carved wood, cut stone and wrought iron. This was also a period of great urban renewal. Large towns knocked down their fortifications in order to expand, landscaping multiplied and urban planning was elevated to a science, as illustrated by the new layout of the watchmaking towns of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle. Rational and functional, this new urban layout organized in parallel strips, interweaving housing and workshops, transformed these two cities into factory towns. It was also in La Chaux-de-Fonds that Charles L'Eplattenier, a professor at the École d'Art, developed a regional decorative art, blending Art Nouveau formal innovations and local inspiration, dubbed the "sapin style" in reference to the fir trees lining the Jura skyline. The town's Jura limestone crematorium is the most representative example.
In Praise of Modernity
As the birthplace of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, aka Le Corbusier, Switzerland can lay claim to being the cradle of modernism. The Villa Jeanneret-Pierret, nicknamed the Maison Blanche, still has its neoclassical trappings, yet Le Corbusier's modernism is already apparent in the principles of the entablature window and the roof terrace. Le Corbusier's style then evolved between cubism and rationalism, freeing space from the heaviness of traditional structures to create a free plan that was uncluttered by superfluous decoration. Form and function are combined in buildings with clean, geometric lines. Among the master's greatest achievements, don't miss the Villa Turque, with its astonishing reinforced concrete framework of floors supported by square posts, revealing an open, modular space; the Villa Le Lac, or the art of minimalism; the Clarté building in Geneva, dubbed the "glass house" because of its free-form glass façade, a masterpiece of inventiveness with its open-plan living spaces and ball-sliding windows (a great novelty for the time!); and of course the Clarté building in Paris, a masterpiece of inventiveness with its open-plan living spaces and ball-sliding windows (a great novelty for the time!), and the Clarté building in Geneva, a masterpiece of inventiveness with its open-plan living spaces and ball-sliding windows (a great novelty for the time!)), not to mention one of his most recent creations, his all-glass and steel pavilion in Zurich, now a public museum dedicated to his work. The Vaud Riviera is one of the breeding grounds of modernism in Switzerland. Le Corbusier's villas rubbed shoulders with the Villa Karma, a bare, uncluttered building redesigned by Adolf Loos, and the Villa Kenwin, nicknamed the "Bauhaus on Lake Geneva", with its horizontal balconies and canopies. At the same time, Dornach was seeing the emergence of strange buildings with no right angles, such as the monumental concrete Goetheanum. These buildings follow to the letter the principles laid down by Rudolf Steiner, theorist of anthroposophy, a doctrine that sees the material world as a visible manifestation of the spiritual world. The country also embarked on new urban planning projects. The Prélaz garden city was one of the first of its kind. It combines apartment buildings and small terraced houses in an urban ensemble that follows the contours of Lausanne's topography. The two- or three-storey semi-detached house with garden is the most common housing scheme, as illustrated by Freidorf, a housing estate designed by Hannes Meyer, one of the directors of the Bauhaus. After the war, these housing estates gave way to large-scale housing projects. The most famous of these is Le Lignon in Vernier. Its broken-line silhouette is 1,065 m long. In complete opposition to this residential monumentalism, Pascal Häusermann imagined egg- or bubble-shaped dwellings around Geneva, unusual silhouettes determined by an economy of means and a quest for functionality. Astonishing!
Contemporary effervescence
Switzerland is home to some of the world's greatest contemporary designers. Mario Botta is the leading figure of the Ticino school, whose sensitive, sensual architecture is inspired as much by the environment as by the individual needs of its users. Mario Botta is renowned for his simple geometrical forms, which come to life through astonishing interplays of light and shadow, revealing the purity of the materials used, brick in particular. Among the architect's finest creations, don't miss the sumptuous perched chapel of Monte Tamaro, the church of San Giovanni Battista in Mogno with its magnificent polychromy of white marble and grey granite, the Jean Tinguely Museum in Basel, all in pale pink sandstone, or the incredible spa of the Tschuggen Grand Hotel. Livio Vacchini, another eminent member of the Ticino school, designed the astonishing Ferriera in Locarno, whose black steel mesh structure serves as both support and backdrop. Another leading figure in Swiss architecture is Peter Zumthor, who was a cabinetmaker before becoming an architect. It's easy to understand the respect for materials that permeates every one of his creations. The architect doesn't claim to follow any particular style, preferring to make each of his creations a unique architectural experience in keeping with the history of the site, as in the case of his magnificent thermal baths in Vals, built entirely of local gneiss. A respect for the place and its history is echoed by the most famous of the Herzog & de Meuron architectural duos. Their creations are characterized by formal rigor, purity of line and simplicity of volume. Their work includes the Roche Institute tower in Basel. Bernard Tschumi, who completely redesigned Lausanne's Flon district with its habitable bridges, and Roger Diener, who designed Biel's Kunsthaus Pasquart, an astonishing cubic monolith associated with the city's former hospital, are among the other great figures of Swiss architecture. But Switzerland has also played host to some of the biggest names in international architecture, notably at two astonishing sites. The most famous is the Vitra Design Museum and its campus. The main building, an interweaving of different volumes in a contorted geometry, is Frank Gehry's first European achievement. The pavilions and production halls were designed by Tadao Ando, the SANAA agency, the Grimshaw agency and Alvaro Siza, while Renzo Piano created a "micro-house". Herzog & de Meuron designed the Vitra Haus, a five-storey superimposition of gabled houses with glass facades serving as showrooms, while nearby, Zaha Hadid redesigned the fire station, a veritable architectural sculpture whose concrete canopy seems suspended in the air. The campus of the École polytechnique de Lausanne is home to the Rolex Learning Center, with its undulating silhouette designed by the SANAA agency, the Art Lab, an astonishing wooden pavilion with a pivoting, undulating roof designed by Kengo Kuma, and Dominique Perrault's polychrome glass buildings. Many other contemporary treasures await you across the country, such as the Kultur und Kongresszentrum Luzern, a glass and steel building with a cantilevered copper roof designed by Jean Nouvel, Tamedia's offices in Zurich, whose 50 m-long wooden structure was created without metal supports by Shigeru Ban, or the beautiful Centre Paul Klee in Bern and the Fondation Beyeler Museum in Basel, elegant creations by Renzo Piano that create an astonishing dialogue between nature and architecture.
Traditional architecture
Let's start by dispelling the myth of the "Swiss chalet". This model, which has spread throughout the world, is not Swiss at all! In fact, it's an idealized vision of alpine rusticity dreamed up by European architects to satisfy their wealthy clients who wanted to indulge in a luxurious return to nature. But this idealized vision of Swiss architecture is not entirely unfounded. The country abounds in vernacular treasures. First, there are the unusual. In the Val Poschiavo, you may come across some astonishing igloo-like round constructions made of stone superimposed without mortar. These are often storage areas. The Val Bavona, meanwhile, is famous for its stone architecture, from dry-stone houses ( Rustici) to troglodyte shelters ( Splüi), often circular in plan, with dry-stone walls and boulders serving as roofs. The same stone architecture is found in Zermatt, famous for its Gädini, buildings resting on flat stone slabs supported on stilts. Their larch wood structure darkens over time, making it easier to store heat. The roof is covered with heavy slabs of rock for added stability. Although stone is very much in evidence, wood remains the material of choice in traditional architecture. Houses in the Engadine and Appenzell regions are veritable jewels. Their facades are explosions of color, punctuated by painted window and door frames. In the Engadine, some facades also use the sgraffito technique, in which the top layer of plaster is scraped to give the illusion of relief patterns. The houses of Appenzell are famous for their large rows of windows and gables in a variety of shapes. Throughout Switzerland, many wooden houses offer a wealth of decorative features: sculpted balconies, portals and ridge beams, friezes and lace-like mantling... Wood's potential is infinite! In Alpine regions, wooden houses often have a masonry first floor for stability and insulation. Overhanging roofs to protect the facades are also the rule. But whether they are log or half-timbered (like the beautiful whitewashed houses with red half-timbering in Marthalen), whether they have a thatched hipped roof or a gable roof in wood shingles or tiles, all these houses bear witness to a vernacular architecture conceived in harmony with nature. Switzerland has lived up to its reputation as an open-air museum!
