La Neuveville

La Neuveville leans on the south slope of the Chasseral and comes down to Lake Biel, between the vines and the water. The old town holds within a few parallel cobbled streets, lined with houses in coloured shutters and punctuated by fountains; the walls remain, the defensive towers, and a clock tower closing the perspective. Above, on a rocky shelf, the Schlossberg castle — built from 1283 to 1288 by the prince-bishop of Basel — commands the roofs. It all fits on one slope: from the lake, at 429 metres, to the place called Sur la Roche, at 926 metres.

The status of the place has long been ambiguous and still is. A village by size, it held the title of town under the agreement on the old towns, and it sits today in the Union of Swiss Cities without being a town in the sense of federal statistics. This small French-speaking place in a German-speaking canton hosts the Council of the Bernese Jura, the first regional parliament in Switzerland, whose 24 members are elected by the population of the French-speaking region of the canton of Bern. Outside the walls stands the Blanche-Église, whose building goes back to the 7th century; restored in 1984, it keeps frescoes from the 14th and 15th centuries.

The shore one walks along today did not exist a century and a half ago. The first correction of the Jura waters, carried out from 1868 to 1878, lowered the level of the lake: the periodic floods stopped, the pressure of the water on the banks eased — causing collapses at La Neuveville — and a band of new land, some 300 metres wide, appeared between the old town and the water. The drained shores yielded the remains of lake dwellings until then submerged, among them the station of Chavannes. The local doctor Victor Gross led excavations there; the purchase of his collection lies at the origin of the founding of the Swiss National Museum in Zurich.

Why this place is remarkable

Three things hold together here: a medieval enceinte still legible with its towers, the episcopal castle of 1283-1288 clinging above the town, and a shoreline entirely made by engineers between 1868 and 1878. To which a political function is added: La Neuveville is the seat of the Council of the Bernese Jura, the first regional parliament in Switzerland.

History and origin

From 1797 to 1815 La Neuveville belonged to France — first in the département of Mont-Terrible, then, from 1800, in that of Haut-Rhin; the Congress of Vienna assigned the former bishopric of Basel to the canton of Bern in 1815. The 19th century above all transformed the shore: the correction of the Jura waters, from 1868 to 1878, pushed the lake back and brought lake dwellings to light. Trade in objects picked up on the strand grew so brisk — some went as far as making fakes — that the Bernese authorities banned the collecting of antiquities in 1873.