 Neuchâtel: Below the castle and the collegiate church spreads a
labyrinth of car-free alleys. Many of the old houses are built of yellow
sandstone, which led the novelist Alexandre Dumas to describe them as appearing
“as if carved out of butter”. Recent years have seen some stylish modern
buildings added to the list of sights.
Art, architecture, design.
At one end of the Old Town, the 12th-century castle and collegiate church
together form an Acropolis-like blend of the sacred and secular. Down on the
lake, the Hôtel Palafitte, originally built for the Swiss national exhibition
Expo.02, is particularly noteworthy.
The hotel’s high-tech pavilions are built on stilts and seem to float over
the water, blending in beautifully with the lakeside setting. On the hillside
above the town stands the Centre Dürrenmatt, designed by the architect Mario
Botta. It celebrates the work of the Swiss novelist and playwright Friedrich
Dürrenmatt, who lived in Neuchâtel until his death in 1990.
Highlights
Old Town. At its heart are the castle, collegiate
church, and the many 17th- and 18th-century houses built of yellow sandstone.
Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel. Work by Swiss
artists, ceramics and porcelain, and the extraordinary automata built in the
1770s by local watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz.
Laténium. Archaeological museum and park, home to 50,000
historic and prehistoric objects.
Centre Dürrenmatt. Mario Botta’s museum devoted to the
novelist and playwright is a magnificent architectural monument. |
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