Dürrenmatt-Mansarde, Student housing attic in Bern, Switzerland
The Dürrenmatt-Mansarde is an attic room on the top floor of a house at Laubeggstrasse 49 in Bern, featuring wall paintings, a kitchenette, a bathroom, and internet access. It is managed by the Dürrenmatt Foundation and offered as accommodation to people working in the cultural field.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt lived in this attic room from 1942 to 1946 while studying at the University of Bern, with his family occupying the lower floors of the same house. The wall paintings were made during those years, painted directly onto the plaster.
The walls of the room are covered with paintings made by Dürrenmatt himself as a young man, long before he became known as a writer. They show that he took visual art just as seriously as literature.
Access to the room is reserved for people with a connection to the cultural community in Bern, so it is worth contacting the foundation well in advance. It is not a standard tourist accommodation and requires a clear link to cultural activity.
The wall paintings were hidden under a layer of plaster for decades before being rediscovered and restored in the early 1990s. Without that chance finding, this early record of Dürrenmatt's work as a visual artist would have been lost.
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