Béatrice-von-Wattenwyl-Haus
Encyclopedia
Mansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
on the Junkerngasse
Junkerngasse
-External links:...
No. 59 in the Old City of Bern, only a few steps away from the Erlacherhof
Erlacherhof
The Erlacherhof is a town mansion on the Junkerngasse No. 47 in the Old City of Bern, only a few steps away from the Béatrice-von-Wattenwyl-Haus....
.
The mansion is built up of several medieval houses. This is still visible on the north façade (main entrance) which consists of 3 medieval houses.
Between 1695 and 1710 on the order of its owner, the Bernese patrician Samuel Frisching II, an ancestor of Franz Rudolf Frisching
Franz Rudolf Frisching
thumb|Franz Rudolf Frisching in the uniform of an officer of the [[Bernese]] Huntsmen Corps with his [[Berner Laufhund]], painted by [[Jean Preudhomme]] in 1785...
, the mansion underwent a rebuilt by the architect Joseph Abeille. Abeille restructured the interior of the mansion and added the elegant south façade in the Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
style.
In 1838 the mansion passed through marriage into the von Wattenwyl family. The last private owners of the mansion, the Bernese patricians Béatrice and Jakob Emanuel von Wattenwyl, had no children and bequeathed the mansion to the Swiss Confederation in 1929 which came into effect in 1934 on the death of Jakob Emanuel von Wattenwyl who survived his wife. The mansion is still furnished with the original furniture mainly from the 18th and 19th century as well as many portrait paintings representing members of the Frisching and the von Wattenwyl families. To the mansion belongs the largest terraced garden of any privately built residences in the Old City of Bern.
Nowadays, the mansion is used as the official town residence for ceremonial events by the Swiss Federal Council
Swiss Federal Council
The Federal Council is the seven-member executive council which constitutes the federal government of Switzerland and serves as the Swiss collective head of state....
.
The mansion is open to the public 4 times a year, every first Saturday in January, April, July and October.
Literature
- Monica Bilfinger und Martin Fröhlich: Schweizerische Kunstführer GSK, Band 681: Das Beatrice von Wattenwil-Haus in Bern, Bern 2000, ISBN 3-85782-681-9