A summer house dressed as a castle, with a park to match its ambition.
Thun castle
Four white towers watching the Aare slide out of the lake.
Thun Castle stands on a hill above the old town, built between 1180 and 1190 by Duke Berthold V of Zähringen. He raised the keep to the level of what is now the Knights' Hall, a room fourteen meters tall and among the best preserved of its kind from the High Middle Ages in Switzerland. The Zähringens never lived here. The House of Kyburg inherited the castle in 1218 and added the upper floors.
Five levels hold the museum today: urban history in the basement, weapons and armor above it, the Knights' Hall on the third floor, and narrow turret stairs leading higher still. From the four corner towers, the view opens over the rooftops of Thun, the Aare River, Lake Thun, and the peaks of the Bernese Oberland beyond.
The climb up the stairs slows a visitor down before the view does the rest.
