Historical Museum of Bern, History museum in Kirchenfeld, Switzerland
The Historical Museum of Bern is a cultural-history museum on Helvetiaplatz, housed in a historicist building by André Lambert completed in 1894, with a 2009 extension called Kubus. Its roughly 500,000 objects cover Bern's prehistory and history plus ethnographic collections from Asia, Oceania, America and Egypt. Above the main entrance is Léo-Paul Robert's 1900 glass mosaic "The Age of History".
The building was constructed in 1894 by architect André Lambert and incorporates design features from castles of the 15th and 16th centuries. This architecture blends historic Swiss building styles with the modern museum concept of that era.
The museum's name comes from the Bern Historical Museum foundation, created in 1889 as the Swiss National Museum foundation and renamed in 1893. Its collection grew from the canton's arsenal holdings, the city's pieces kept in the Bern Minster sacristy and the Burgergemeinde's Vögeli Library. Since 2019 Arabic-speaking Multaka guides have led free tours for refugees and migrants, discussing how objects were acquired.
The museum stands on Helvetiaplatz in the Kirchenfeld quarter, with the Welttelegrafen-Denkmal in front of the main entrance. A major renovation is planned to begin in 2028; during the works the Bernese history exhibition is to remain open in the Kubus building, with full reopening expected around 2032.
The Moringen arrowhead had sat in the collection for well over a century before analysis in 2023 showed it was made of meteoric iron. It is one of roughly 500,000 objects held by the museum.
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