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The best thing to do in Bern is to walk the UNESCO-listed old town under its 6 km of arcades and climb the Minster tower for CHF 6 (about €6, $7, £5), which is the cheapest view in the city. Bern is Switzerland’s federal capital, it sits inside a loop of the Aare, and the whole centre is walkable from the main station in under 15 minutes. Two cards decide what a visit costs: the Bern Ticket, which gives overnight guests free public transport, and the Museum Card, which covers every museum in the city. All 15 entries below carry their 2026 price, their closed day and how to reach them.
The two cards that decide what Bern costs
Two Bern cards cut the cost of a visit sharply, and one of them is free. The Bern Ticket and the Museum Card are explained below.
- Bern Ticket: free, and automatic if you stay overnight. Guests aged 6 and over in participating accommodation get free travel on buses, trams and S-Bahn trains in Libero zones 100 and 101 for the whole stay, from the first night. The hotel issues it; you do not buy it.
- Museum Card: CHF 28 (about €30, $34, £25) for 24 hours, CHF 35 (about €37, $43, £32) for 48 hours. It admits you free to every museum in the city of Bern. The Kunstmuseum and the Zentrum Paul Klee alone cost CHF 44 (about €47, $54, £40) separately, so two museums in a day already justify the 24-hour card.
The Bern Ticket is the reason staying in the city beats commuting in, and it is worth weighing against the cheaper rooms outside the centre when you compare Bern hotel prices on Trip.com. The rest of the country’s price levels are set out in the guide to prices in Bern and Switzerland.
1. The old town
Bern’s old town is free, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983, and is the most complete medieval city centre in Switzerland. It occupies a peninsula inside a bend of the Aare, laid out to a single plan after a fire in 1405 rebuilt it in sandstone, and the streets still run in the pattern the Zähringen founders set out in 1191. A line of 16th-century Renaissance fountains stands along the main axis, the Kindlifresserbrunnen among them.
The arcades, called the Lauben, are the thing people remember. They run for roughly 6 km along both sides of the main streets, covered from end to end, so the shops and cafés under them stay usable in rain and snow. Cellar steps in the pavement lead down into what were once storage vaults and are now bars, theatres and boutiques.
Everything here costs nothing, and the old town starts a few minutes’ walk from Bern main station. Trams and buses run through it, and an overnight guest travels on them free with the Bern Ticket.
2. Rosengarten
The Rosengarten is a free public park on the slope above the old town, and its terrace gives the view of Bern that ends up on the postcards. From the low wall you look straight down onto the Aare loop, the roofs of the old town and the Minster spire behind them. The park keeps rose beds, irises and a lily pond, and it has a restaurant with the same view for people who would rather sit than stand.
Entry is free and the park is open all year. Bus 10 towards Ostermundigen Rüti stops at Rosengarten; on foot, a short, steep path climbs from the BärenPark on the river below, which is the route to take if you are already down at the bears.
3. Zytglogge
The Zytglogge is Bern’s clock tower and the inside can only be seen on a guided tour, which costs CHF 25 (about €27, $31, £23) for an adult. It began as a city gate in the early 13th century, then served as a prison, a fire lookout and finally a clock tower, and it carries an astronomical calendar clock installed in 1530. Four minutes before each hour a mechanical parade runs: a procession of bears, a jester, a golden cockerel and Chronos with his hourglass.
Watching the figures from the street costs nothing, and most visitors do exactly that. The tour is the only way to see the medieval clockwork, the beams and the view from the top, it lasts an hour, and groups are capped at 19 people, so booking ahead through Bern Welcome matters. Children pay CHF 12 (about €13, $15, £11) and pensioners CHF 20 (about €21, $25, £18).
The tower stands in the middle of the old town at the Kramgasse end, five minutes on foot from the station and immediately outside the Einstein House.
4. Bern Minster
Bern Minster is free to enter, and climbing its tower costs CHF 6 (about €6, $7, £5), which buys the highest view in the city. The cathedral is the tallest church in Switzerland at 100.6 m (330 ft), begun in 1421 and only finished in 1893, and the carved Last Judgement over the main door survived the Reformation when the interior sculpture did not. Inside hangs the heaviest peal of bells in the country.
The tower has two viewing platforms. The square gallery sits at 46 m (150.9 ft) after 254 steps, and the octagonal gallery at 64 m (210 ft) after 344. There is no lift, and two separate stairways handle the up and the down traffic. Children aged 7 to 16 pay CHF 3 (about €3, $4, £3), students and apprentices CHF 4 (about €4, $5, £4), and an annual pass costs CHF 60 (about €64, $74, £55) for anyone treating the climb as exercise.
The church and tower open every day, with the last ascent in the late afternoon, and the ticket is bought at the information desk inside. The Minsterplatz is a three-minute walk from the Zytglogge.
5. Bundeshaus
Bundeshaus tours are free, last up to 60 minutes and have to be booked, which is the single thing people get wrong about visiting the Swiss parliament. The Federal Palace is the seat of the Federal Assembly and the Federal Council, a symmetrical complex over 300 m (984.3 ft) long finished on 1 April 1902, built in stone quarried from every part of the country as a deliberate statement about the confederation.
Reservations open up to 180 days in advance and go through the parliament’s own visitor service. When the chambers are in session you can instead watch a debate from the public gallery, which is a different experience and a different booking. The Bundesplatz outside is free at any time, and its 26 water jets, one per canton, run in summer.
The Bundeshaus is five minutes on foot from Bern main station, at the edge of the old town above the Aare.
6. Bernisches Historisches Museum and the Einstein Museum
The Bern Historical Museum costs CHF 16 (about €17, $20, £15) and the ticket including the Einstein Museum costs CHF 18 (about €19, $22, £16), which is the version to buy. It is the second largest historical museum in Switzerland, in a building of 1894 designed to look like a 15th-century castle, and its permanent displays run from prehistory through the Burgundian tapestries to collections from Asia, Oceania, the Americas and Egypt.
The Einstein Museum inside it is the serious account of the physics, following Albert Einstein from Bern’s patent office through the 1905 papers to general relativity, with the biography set against the politics of the century. Children aged 6 to 16 pay CHF 8 (about €8, $10, £7) for the museum or CHF 9 (about €10, $11, £8) with the Einstein Museum, a family of five with up to two adults pays CHF 35 (about €37, $43, £32) or CHF 40 (about €42, $49, £36), and Swiss school classes go free.
The museum stands on Helvetiaplatz, over the Kirchenfeld bridge from the old town, in the cluster of museums that makes up Bern’s museum quarter.
7. Kunstmuseum Bern
Kunstmuseum Bern charges CHF 24 (about €25, $30, £22) for an adult and is the oldest art museum in Switzerland with a permanent collection. It holds more than 50,000 works spanning eight centuries, including Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh and Dalí alongside the Swiss names the building exists for, Ferdinand Hodler, Paul Klee and Meret Oppenheim. Temporary exhibitions run alongside the collection rather than replacing it.
Opening hours are Tuesday 10:00 to 20:00, Wednesday to Sunday 10:00 to 17:00, closed on Mondays. Children and young people under 16 go free, which makes this the cheapest serious art museum in the city for a family. The late Tuesday is the quietest slot of the week.
Hodlerstrasse is a five-minute walk from Bern main station, which makes the Kunstmuseum the easiest museum in the city to fit around a train.
8. Museum für Kommunikation
The Museum of Communication costs CHF 18 (about €19, $22, £16) and is the most hands-on museum in Bern. It traces communication from hilltop signal fires to smartphones, using the Swiss postal and telecom collections as its base, and the displays are built to be operated rather than read: pneumatic message tubes, a dialect map you interrogate by voice, a data centre section on privacy and waste. Staff trained as explainers work the floor rather than sitting at a desk, which is unusual and works.
The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 17:00 and closes on Mondays. Children and young people aged 6 to 15 pay CHF 6 (about €6, $7, £5), students and pensioners CHF 12 (about €13, $15, £11), and under-6s go free. Sections aimed at four- to eight-year-olds run alongside the main displays.
Helvetiastrasse sits in the same museum quarter as the Historical Museum, a few minutes apart on foot.
9. Zentrum Paul Klee
The Zentrum Paul Klee costs CHF 20 (about €21, $25, £18) and holds around 4,000 works by Paul Klee, the most extensive collection of his work anywhere. Renzo Piano designed the building as three steel waves rising out of a field on the eastern edge of the city, and the shape is the point: it reads as landscape rather than gallery. Because Klee’s works on paper cannot be permanently lit, the displays rotate, so two visits a year apart show different pictures.
Opening hours are Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 17:00, closed on Mondays. Children aged 6 to under 16 pay CHF 7 (about €7, $9, £6). An internal street links the three wings and carries the café, the shop and the children’s museum, Creaviva.
Bus 12 runs from the city centre to the Zentrum Paul Klee stop, and the ride is free with a Bern Ticket.
10. BärenPark
The BärenPark is free, open all year and the place to see the animal Bern is named after. Legend has it that Berthold V of Zähringen named the city in 1191 after the first beast killed in the hunt, a bear, and the city has kept bears since at least the 16th century. The old Bärengraben pit of 1857 was replaced in 2009 by a 6,000 square metre (1.5 acre) enclosure running down the bank to the Aare, where the bears climb, dig and swim instead of circling concrete.
Nothing here costs anything and there is no closing time on the outdoor viewing. The park is part of Tierpark Bern, the city’s zoo, and sits on the far side of the Nydeggbrücke from the old town, about ten minutes on foot from the Zytglogge. From the bears a steep path climbs to the Rosengarten, which is the natural next stop.
11. Swimming and floating the Aare
Swimming the Aare is free and it is what Bern actually does in summer, from office workers on a lunch break to families on a Sunday. Locals walk upstream, get in, and let the current carry them back down to one of the marked exit points beside the Marzili lido. The water comes off the Alps and stays cold, the current is strong and it does not forgive misjudgement, so this is for confident swimmers who have watched other people do it first and know where they are getting out.
The Aare is the longest river that both rises and ends inside Switzerland, 291.5 km (181.1 mi) from the Oberaar glacier through Lakes Brienz and Thun, round Bern, and on to the Rhine. The stretch of river landscape between Thun and Bern is largely protected.
The Marzili lido below the Bundeshaus is free to enter and has changing rooms, lawns and pools for people who do not want the current. It is a ten-minute walk down from the parliament, or a short ride on the Marzilibahn funicular.
12. Einstein House
The Einstein House costs CHF 8 (about €8, $10, £7) and is the flat where Albert Einstein wrote the 1905 papers. He lived at Kramgasse 49 from 1903 to 1905 with his wife Mileva and their son Hans Albert while working at the Swiss patent office, and the second-floor apartment is furnished as it would have been, small and plain. A floor above carries an exhibition on his life and work.
The house is open daily from 10:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:45, but only in season: the 2026 season ran from 4 February to 18 December, and the house closes for the winter from 19 December, reopening on 1 February 2027. Students and pensioners pay CHF 6 (about €6, $7, £5) and young people aged 8 to 15 pay CHF 5 (about €5, $6, £5).
Kramgasse is in the middle of the old town, a ten-minute walk from the station and a few doors from the Zytglogge. Anyone who wants the physics rather than the flat should go to the Einstein Museum inside the Historical Museum instead.
13. Tierpark Bern at Dählhölzli
Tierpark Bern charges CHF 11 (about €12, $14, £10) for the Dählhölzli zoo, but a large part of the site is free and open round the clock. The enclosures along the Aare bank, holding almost entirely native species such as ibex, chamois, otters and wild boar, cost nothing to walk past, and so does the children’s zoo with its farm animals. The ticket buys the vivarium, with its monkeys, reptiles, fish and the Amazon, reef and mangrove tanks, and the rest of the paying enclosures.
Children aged 6 to 15 pay CHF 7 (about €7, $9, £6), under-5s go free, a family of up to two adults and four children pays CHF 28 (about €30, $34, £25), and pensioners, apprentices and students pay CHF 9 (about €10, $11, £8). The zoo sits in woodland directly on the river.
Bus 19 from Bern main station towards Elfenau stops at Tierpark, and the walk in starts at the edge of the wood.
14. International Jazz Festival Bern
The International Jazz Festival Bern is a ticketed club festival, not a free street event, and it runs over two months rather than one weekend. Hans Zurbrügg founded it in 1976 and it has stayed with straight jazz instead of booking pop names to fill seats, which is why it still draws the musicians it does. More than 200 individual concerts are played each edition in the small room of Marians Jazzroom, at the Hotel Innere Enge, and past bills have carried B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald and Fats Domino.
The 52nd edition runs from 23 March to 29 May 2027. Tickets go on sale once the programme is published, and the room is small enough that the better nights sell out. The festival also gives music students from Switzerland and New York their first stage.
Marians Jazzroom is at Engestrasse 54, north of the old town, reachable by bus and free with a Bern Ticket. Other dates across the country are collected in the festivals in Switzerland guide.
15. Buskers Bern
Buskers Bern fills the old town’s alleys with street performers over three days in August, and it runs on hat money: you pay the artists directly into the hat. The festival began in 2004, draws more than 150 performers a year across music, dance, comedy and puppet theatre, and stages them on dozens of corners rather than on a main stage, so the whole medieval centre becomes the venue. A children’s programme runs earlier in the day on the cathedral platform, and around 60 food stalls work the streets.
The 24th festival takes place from 12 to 14 August 2027; the 23rd ran in August 2026. Beyond the hat money, the festival sells a programme booklet and badge on site, and buying one is how the non-profit covers its costs.
The whole event happens in the old town, which has no festival parking, so arrive by train or tram. The Bern Ticket covers the tram.
How long to spend in Bern
Bern takes a full day for the old town and its landmarks, and two days if you want the museums. The two shapes are set out below.
- One day: the old town. Station, arcades, Zytglogge on the hour, Minster tower, Bundeshaus, BärenPark, Rosengarten for the view, and the Aare at the end.
- Two days: add the museum quarter. The Historical and Einstein Museums, the Museum of Communication and the Zentrum Paul Klee together fill a second day, and a 48-hour Museum Card pays for itself over that span.
Bern also works as a base. Thun is 20 minutes away by direct train and Fribourg, Neuchâtel and Solothurn are all under an hour, while Zurich is under an hour on a direct intercity. Rail tickets into and around the country are worth pricing on Omio before you commit to a pass.
Frequently asked questions
Is Bern worth visiting?
Bern is worth a full day at minimum and two days if museums interest you. Its old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is small enough to cover on foot, and it is cheaper to sleep in than Zurich or Geneva while sitting on the main line between them.
How many days do you need in Bern?
One day covers the old town, the Zytglogge, the Minster tower, the Bundeshaus, the bears and the Rosengarten. A second day covers the museum quarter across the Kirchenfeld bridge. Beyond two days you are using Bern as a base for the Bernese Oberland rather than seeing Bern.
Is Bern expensive?
Bern is expensive by European standards, in line with Switzerland generally, but a surprising amount of it is free. The old town, the arcades, the Bundesplatz, the BärenPark, the Rosengarten, the Aare, the Marzili lido and part of the zoo all cost nothing, and an overnight guest travels on city transport free with the Bern Ticket. What you pay for is museums, at CHF 16 to CHF 24 (about €17 to €25, $20 to $30, £15 to £22) each.
What is Bern famous for?
Bern is famous for being Switzerland’s federal capital, for its arcaded medieval old town on the Aare, for the Zytglogge clock and its mechanical figures, for the bears it is named after, and for Albert Einstein, who wrote the 1905 papers in a flat on Kramgasse. Its old town has been UNESCO listed since 1983.
What should you eat in Bern?
Berner Platte, a plate of boiled and smoked meats with beans and potatoes, is the city’s own dish, and Bernese hazelnut Lebkuchen and the Zibelemärit onion tarts follow the local calendar. The rest of the country’s plates are covered in the guide to the best foods to eat in Switzerland, and the wider cluster starts at the Switzerland hub.
WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips
The five tips below come from checking each Bern attraction’s own 2026 calendar and ticket page, and each one saves money or a wasted walk.
- Ask your hotel for the Bern Ticket at check-in. Every overnight guest aged 6 and over gets free buses, trams and S-Bahn in Libero zones 100 and 101 for the whole stay, and it is issued by the accommodation rather than sold.
- Do two museums on one Museum Card. The 24-hour card costs CHF 28 (about €30, $34, £25) and the Kunstmuseum plus the Zentrum Paul Klee alone come to CHF 44 (about €47, $54, £40) at the door.
- Do not plan museums for a Monday. The Kunstmuseum, the Zentrum Paul Klee and the Museum of Communication all close on Mondays, which leaves the old town, the Minster tower, the bears and the Aare.
- Book the Bundeshaus and the Zytglogge, do not turn up. Parliament tours are free but must be reserved, up to 180 days ahead, and the clock tower tour caps each group at 19 people.
- Climb the Minster before you pay for any other view. CHF 6 (about €6, $7, £5) buys two galleries at 46 m and 64 m over the old town, which is less than a third of what the clock tower tour costs.
About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the team covers Switzerland for independent travellers, from Bern’s arcaded old town and Minster tower to the Einstein flat on Kramgasse and the museums across the Kirchenfeld bridge, including the tours, hotels and rail tickets worth booking. We check each attraction’s own opening calendar and ticket page and update this guide when prices, seasons and closed days change.
