In 1886 the prison moved from the castle tower to the new regional jail at the castle wall; in 1888 the museum moved in – and the jailer began selling the tickets. The story of a remarkable change of place.
Oath-breakers, maids, murderers, «witches» and fortune tellers: the tower books and other legal records kept in the Thun and Bern archives give the condemned of past centuries their stories back. How we research – and how you can help.
For more than 400 years, the Schultheissen – governors of the Bernese state – sat in judgment on Thun’s castle hill. From the town court to gallows and pillory to the modern district court: an overview from our archival research.
In June 2026, Elsbeth Aebersold of the Thun Castle museum team spent half a day with a descendant of the Reusser and Brenneman families – retracing the story of two of the region’s best-known Anabaptist families, where it happened.
Yoder, Reusser and Brenneman are among the great Anabaptist family names of North America – and their trails meet in Steffisburg and the hills around Thun. Notes from our archival research.
High in the medieval keep lies the old prison of Thun Castle, its cells still preserved in the four corner turrets – the place where Anabaptist men and women were held under the Bernese governors. What do the records tell us? A look into our ongoing archival research.