Swiss Shooting Museum

About the building

On Bernastrasse in the Kirchenfeld district, right next to the Bern Historical Museum, stands a sturdy three-storey building with a steep hipped roof that recalls a small castle. On the left of the street front is an almost windowless, tower-like section with a wide pointed-arch entrance; above it a roof structure carries a clock and a pointed spire. On the right the windows are strictly arranged in bays, with paired windows in Gothic profiles on the upper floors and dormers above them. A crenellated wall links the building to a historicist gateway on Helvetiaplatz.

The collection is older than the building. After the 31st Federal Shooting Festival, held in Bern in the summer of 1885, the organisers decided to set up a 'shooters' room' as an exhibition space. The new building on Bernastrasse was commissioned by the Bern shooting society in 1938 and 1939. It was planned by a partnership of the Bern architects Emilien Bertallo and Hans Klauser; according to the building inventory the design may be by Eric Bertallo. On 26 November 1939 the museum opened at its new site.

The building inventory describes the building as deliberately traditionalist, in keeping with its contents, and sees it as a document of the years just before the war. The museum itself speaks of a house in Heimatstil. On the facade are portraits of presidents of the Swiss Shooting Association made by Walter Linck. Above the entrance Fritz Traffelet painted a mural that, very much in the spirit of those years, shows soldiers and citizens under the Swiss flag.

The exterior was renovated in 1985 and the interior in 1990/91. In 2025 a thorough renovation followed, during which the permanent exhibition was also redesigned. The museum is one of the few sports history museums in Switzerland. According to Wikipedia it is funded by the Swiss Shooting Sport Federation and friends of the museum, without public subsidies. The collection is protected as cultural property.

One detail: the crenel-like opening on the second floor of the tower section, the only opening in this otherwise closed wall.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Bernastrasse 5 · Wikipedia (de): Schweizer Schützenmuseum · Schweizer Schützenmuseum (offizielle Website) · Wikidata: Q27479802