Berner Münster
Wherever you are in Bern, there the Münster is. Piercing the skyline like Alfalfa’s cowlick from The Little Rascals.
But as you draw closer, Old Town swallows it whole, feeding you alleyway glimpses until, BAM, it hits you full-frontal, like a Christian family stumbling onto a nude beach in France. Unapologetic. Dominant. The big man with eight inches of swinging confidence casting a swinging pendulum shadow across your face as you try to get a tan on spring break.
Step inside and the space swallows you whole. Cavernouss. It doesn’t echo, it devours sound like a coke fiend a white line. The Bern Minster was once filled with golden altars, colorful paintings, statues of saints, and flickering candlelight. That is, until the Reformation came along. In 1528, when Bern officially became Protestant, most of those decorations were taken down, smashed, or quietly wheeled out the back door. What was left? Stone. Silence. And the echo of sermons ringing off the soaring Gothic arches.
But not everything was lost. The Last Judgment sculpture over the main arch entryway somehow survived the iconoclasm. flexing down upon you like bouncers at the gates of heaven and dripping with the detail, of over 200 figures is The Last Judgment on acid, saints and sinners thrashing in a stone mosh pit. Every inch screams penance or glory, depending on whose team you’re on.
The organ? It doesn’t play, it detonates, you don’t hear it so much as feel it in your bones, like God just let one rip and the thunder hasn't finished rolling.
You sink into a pew, tilt your head back at the vaulted ceilings, and mutter under your breath: How in the actual fuck did they build this?
The Münster didn’t just pop up like a tent at a Renaissance fair. Building this beast was more like baking a tiered wedding cake with no recipe, no KitchenAid and a newborn shitting themselg and screaming bloody murder every time you looked away.
It took over 400 years to finish.
Four. Hundred. Years.
generations of masons, sculptors, and poor bastards with wheelbarrows kept the dream alive. Think about it, your grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa died building the same damn building.
Construction kicked off in 1421, right after a fire roasted half the city like a bratwurst. And it wasn’t just fat-cat nobles and merchants bankrolling the thing with gold and stained-glass addictions. Regular folks pitched in too—coins, labor, whatever they had lying around. There’s an actual 15th-century ledger that reads like a medieval Kickstarter, listing every penny donated.
But don’t think this was all about piety, incense and the ultimate sin incinerator. The Münster was a power move. Bern wanted to show anyone and everyone just how big their wurst was erecting from its unzipped zipper. No, this wasn’t just a backwoods bear town anymore. This was a downward dog meets doggy style swagger carved in sandstone.
Climb the tower if you’ve got the legs and the existential fortitude. It’s 344 steps of medieval cardio, spiraling tighter and tighter until you pop out on the top platform, lungs burning, thighs screaming, and then it hits you: Bern laid out like a model train set, the Aare curling around it like a lazy serpent, and beyond that, the Alps, smug and snow-capped, like they know they’ll outlast you and your Instagram post.
