Muristalden Fountain

About the building

At the roundabout by the Bärengraben, between Grosser Muristalden and Aargauerstalden, stands a fountain with a squat obelisk. This is where the old roads towards Aargau and towards the Bernese Oberland used to fork. The city's building inventory lists it as the Staldenbrunnen; the fountain belongs to the City of Bern.

It is part of the 18th-century improvement of the city's eastern exits. The new Grosser Muristalden was completed at the end of October 1783. Immediately afterwards the building office proposed reserving a particularly fine block of white Jura limestone in the Solothurn quarry for a fountain at the fork of the old and new roads. The council approved the project on 9 July 1784, and the accounts for the finished fountain were settled in autumn 1785. The design is attributed to Niklaus Sprüngli; the list of the architect's works on Wikipedia gives the fountain the year 1784.

The basin is a transverse oval in the shape of a tub, with an empty medallion on the front. On the fountain column, stone lion masks hold the spouts, which according to the building inventory are bronze with spiral supports; Wikidata lists brass and iron. Above a boldly profiled cornice rises the obelisk, a simplified version of the one on the Waisenhausplatz fountain. The material is pale Solothurn shell limestone.

The fountain no longer stands exactly in its original place. It was first set up facing north-west. In the summer of 1844 it was moved slightly to the south-east when the approach to the new Nydegg Bridge was built, and the whole area between the two Stalden roads has changed a great deal since then. A detail to look for: the stone lion masks on the column that hold the spouts.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Kleiner Muristalden NN (Staldenbrunnen) · Historisch-Topographisches Lexikon der Stadt Bern: Muristaldenbrunnen · Inventar historischer Verkehrswege der Schweiz (IVS): BE 10.2.1 · Wikipedia (de): Werkverzeichnis Niklaus Sprüngli · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Baugruppe Stalden · Wikidata: Q56516320