Rheinfelden

Rheinfelden holds the Swiss bank of the Rhine, at 274 metres, and gives its name to the Aargau district around it. From the far bank the town reads at a glance: a row of houses pressed close to the water, a squat tower under a pointed roof, the onion-domed bell tower rising above them, and the river filling the whole foreground. In the Middle Ages the town belonged to the House of Swabia.

The 2011 figures give 12,074 inhabitants, 29.1% of them foreign nationals. The confessional make-up is divided — 36.1% Catholic, 33% Reformed, 7.1% Muslim, then Orthodox and Christian Catholic minorities — and German is the main language of 82.9% of inhabitants, ahead of Italian at 3.8%.

The town's most tenacious custom was born of an epidemic. In 1541 plague struck Rheinfelden, and the water of the public fountains was suspected of carrying it. Twelve survivors then vowed, before those same fountains, to protect the inhabitants from the scourge, and founded a brotherhood placed under the invocation of Saint Sebastian, held to be a healer of plague. Each year, on 24 and then 31 December, twelve members of the brotherhood cross the town in procession and sing in a circle, before each fountain, an old Christmas hymn. This is the Brunnensingen, the singing of the fountains.

Why this place is remarkable

Rheinfelden holds together two memories that sit awkwardly side by side. That of armies: two battles bear the town's name, in 1638 and in 1678, and the French took and dismantled it in 1744. And that of a vow: since 1541 a brotherhood of twelve men has sung at the close of each year before the fountains, in memory of a plague thought to have come from their water. The first left destruction behind, the second is played out again.

History and origin

The town's name returns twice in the European wars of the 17th century. In 1638 French and Austrians fought here in two stages: in the first, Jean de Werth prevailed and the duke of Rohan was mortally wounded; in the second, the same Jean de Werth was beaten and taken prisoner. Forty years later, on 6 July 1678, at the end of the Dutch War, the imperial forces under Charles V of Lorraine were defeated by Marshal de Créquy. In 1744 the French took the town and dismantled it.