A Day in the City of Solothurn, Switzerland’s Hidden Gem in the Jura

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The Canton of Solothurn

If you have followed along with our entire One Year: 26 Cantons Journey in 2024, this is it. We have officially made it to the end. The Cantons are all visited and, as of this week, there will be a post covering at least a snippet of every one of Switzerland’s 26 Cantons up on the blog! You can find links to every post on the One Year: 26 Cantons homepage.

I intentionally left the Canton of Solothurn to the very end. Beyond being one of Switzerland’s more obscure destinations, the Canton’s namesake City of Solothurn is a true gem. After visiting with Corinne’s father in 2023, I simply could not believe that I had never seen Solothurn in any guidebook or video covering Switzerland. That was the inspiration for the One Year: 26 Canton Project and, ultimately, the entire Hidden Switzerland blog.

Tucked neatly between the Jura mountains and the banks of the Aare, the City of Solothurn has a relaxed and regal vibe that you don’t find in many parts of German speaking Switzerland. Its walkable old town is the kind of layer cake of architecture and history that someone like myself dreams about at night and its surroundings offer numerous opportunities for hiking and exploration.

Even now, after visiting every Canton in Switzerland, I can say with little hesitation that Solothurn is something special, one of my favorite cities in all of Switzerland.

I did make another trip to the Canton of Solothurn for some hiking earlier this year, but I really want to share my first impressions from 2023. That trip offered an excellent overview of the city and its surroundings, and I think it’s a perfect taster for what the Canton of Solothurn is all about.

If you are looking for a day trip to one of Switzerland’s most interesting, off the beaten path, cities, this should be your very first stop.

Thanks for joining us!

Getting to Solothurn

While we drove to the Canton of Solothurn back in 2023, it is easy enough to get to by train. Solothurn’s train station is conveniently located just over the Aare from the old town center and its an easy walk right into the heart of the city.

By rail from Zurich, the trip to Solothurn is direct and takes just under an hour. From the Berner Oberland, where we live, it’s just over an hour with a quick change in Bern.

Solothurn sits within the Jura mountains squashed between the Cantons of Basel-Land to the north, Bern to the south, Jura to the west, and Aargau to the east. Owing largely to the City’s expansionist tendencies in the Middle Ages, the Canton looks a bit like a fragmented ‘splat’ on the map and is well known for having one of the oddest borders in a country loaded with odd borders.

The Canton of Solothurn outlined in red

Into Catholic Switzerland

From our parking spot just outside the old town, we wandered towards Solothurn’s imposing town fortifications. Built over several centuries, the town walls which ring the old town on three sides are an interesting layer cake of different eras. The towers and gates date to the Middle Ages while the more modern bastions, which form the edges of a star fort, date to the 17th Century.

While similar baroque fortifications were constructed across Switzerland around the 17th Century (the largest that come to mind were in Bern), very few survive today, making Solothurn unique among Swiss cities.

Passing through the old Baseltor, or Basel Gate, into Solothurn’s old town, I was immediately struck by a subtly regal and polished air that you don’t find everywhere in Switzerland.

Solothurn's bastions and moat just on the edge of the old town

Solothurn at its busiest on market day

When the Reformation swept through Switzerland in the 16th Century, some Cantons were more eager and willing to convert than others and the resulting divisions left a patchwork quilt of preferred religious association across the landscape.

Solothurn, along with much of the remote Jura, choose to remain Catholic leaving many of its subtle architectural details intact. In Protestant Switzerland, whitewashing and penitence took a real toll on town attractiveness.

A Trading Hub on the Aare

From the Baseltor, we strolled along Solothurn’s old town streets admiring its fanciful clock tower, beautiful fountains, and many iconic Baroque buildings before following the Aare River back towards our starting point.

Clock tower in Solothurn

Based on the archaeological record, the City of Solothurn is one of the oldest places of occupation in all of Switzerland. Sitting on the edge of a glacial moraine, or pile of debris, left by the retreating Rhone Glacier at the end of the last ice age, Solothurn has plentiful evidence for Mesolithic and Neolithic Stone Age communities.

Interestingly, far less has been uncovered from the Bronze and Iron Ages. The city only seemed to really appear as a proper settlement again shortly before the arrival of the Romans in the 1st Century. A vicus, or small settlement was built in the area of Solothurn’s modern old town to take advantage of shipping on the Aare and, possibly, as the site of a bridge on the road from Vindonissa (which we last week) to Aventicum, the Capital of Roman Helvetia that we visited some months back.

Evidence of Solothurn’s Roman roots are still scattered around its old town here and there but the majority of what is known was discovered during demolition work in the foundations of the City’s St. Ursen Cathedral in the 18th Century. The vicus was self-administered by local leaders, had several temples and even sported its own cult, worshiping the horse goddess Epona.

Fast forward a few hundred years to the 9th and 10th Centuries and Solothurn was one of only three major cities on the Swiss plateau (the other two being Lausanne and Zurich). Under Burgundian control, Solothurn saw the coronation of several Burgundian King’s in its local chapel, multiple imperial diets, and the introduction of a monastery dedicated to St. Ursen, a Roman Christian martyr said to have been beheaded in Solothurn around the 4th Century.

While the Burgundian’s did see the expansion of Solothurn’s Roman core, most of the city’s medieval architecture owes itself to the later Zähringens who took possession of the city after the Burgundian lines died out in the 11th Century. The Zähringens constructed many of the towers in town, including the base of the town’s iconic clock tower, and more or less laid out the town’s modern grid.

With the passing of the Zähringens in the early 13th Century, Solothurn became a free imperial city in the Holy Roman Empire and constructed its very own Cathedral of St. Ursen. The church’s original bell towers were brought down by the Basel Earthquake in 1356 and, their replacement, the Wendelstein tower, collapsed of its own volition in the late 18th Century, necessitating a replacement.

In place of the old Cathedral, a massive white-stone Neoclassical church with an onion-dome was constructed at the end of the 18th Century. That church is now the city’s crown-jewel.

Inside Solothurn's richly decorated Cathedral

Designed by a Ticino architect, the Cathedral is a richly decorated masterpiece on the inside and out that speaks to Solothurn’s wealth. The building’s single large belltower (if a bit terrifyingly damaged by another earthquake at the end of the 19th Century) offers panoramic views over Solothurn and the entire Swiss Plateau.

Looking out over Solothurn from the Cathedral Bell Tower

Just Beyond the City

After climbing down from the bell tower and wandering around the old town for a bit longer, we hoped back in the car and headed a few minutes up the road towards the Jura and Solothurn’s famous Verenaschlucht.

Beautiful and narrow slot canyons seem to be dime-a-dozen in the Jura, and the Verenaschlucht, or Verena Gorge, is no exception. A short hike takes you up a paved path through lush greenery to several small bridges over the stream and, eventually, a pair of chapels and a small house, the home of one of Switzerland’s last hermits.

While a bit astonishing to imagine outside of the Himalayas in 2024, a hermit has occupied the Verena Gorge since at least the 15th Century.

In the 18th Century the elite of Solothurn developed the gorge into a park of sorts with a paved path and memorial plaques to the town’s elite. Somewhat of a Solothurn Hall of Fame. These developments increased the visitation to the gorge and today, there is even a small restaurant just past the chapels.

The hermitage in Verenaschluct

Looking up the lush Verenaschluct

All that infrastructure seems to make the hermitage a bit counterintuitive to me but, nonetheless, it remains an important institution in Solothurn. While researching for this post, I came across an advertisement from the mid-2000’s looking to fill the hermit position. It called for a religious person who was ‘happy to meet and interact with new people.’ So it seems, the hermit’s predecessor had effectively burned out from all the visitors!

After back tracking out of the gorge, we made our way towards our final stop of the day, nearby Schloss Waldegg.

From 1530 to 1792, Solothurn served as the seat of the French Ambassador to the Old Swiss Confederacy. This brought not only a significant French influence to Solothurn but also a significant amount of money and influence to the city and its rich patrician families.

Between 1682 and 1686 Solothurn Patrician Johann Viktor von Besenval had a magnificent summer residence built just to the east of Solothurn against the foothills of the Jura. The magnificent building with jaw dropping views was inspired by French and Italian architecture.

Regal Schloss Waldegg

Now a museum, the building’s richly decorated salons, extensive collection of artwork, and original furniture vividly illustrate the French-influence on this corner of Switzerland, an excellent exploration to round off our day in Solothurn.

An End to Our One Year: 26 Canton Adventure

When I think back on the last year, I feel incredibly grateful that we got the chance to visit so many interesting and varied places. Heading to all of Switzerland’s 26 Cantons in 2024 gave me an exceptional overview of the country and makes me truly excited for the coming year.

While we are, by no means, done exploring Switzerland, the priorities for 2025 are shifting slightly. Rather than visiting so many places in 2025, I intend to buckle down on my German studying, and we will try to get even more familiar with our backyard here in the Berner Oberland. There is really only so much time that you can get away with only half-knowing what is going on and it will be nice to reduce our travel days a bit when we do head out.

Of course, that change in priorities will also mean some slight changes to the blog as well. This will be the last post for 2024 and, when we pick up again in the new year, we will start on a new bi-weekly posting schedule.

We had a blast sharing our trips with you and wish you all the best for a wonderful Holiday Season!

We hope you enjoyed hearing about our visit to Solothurn. You can check out the other posts in this project our One Year: 26 Canton page!

Until next time, gute Reise, and feel free to leave a comment on one of our social media platforms!