In 1886 the canton closed the old prison in the castle tower and built the new regional jail against the castle wall. Only two years later, in 1888, the museum opened its doors up in the medieval keep – and from then on the jailer served, in one and the same person, as prison warden, ticket seller and museum guard. Few places tell the transition from the old world to the new as vividly as Thun’s castle hill.

Imprisoned in a landmark

For centuries, the authorities had suspects and convicts «put in the stocks, in the tower or in prison», as the old legal language has it. The cells in the tower survive to this day: bare wooden compartments high under the roof of the mighty keep, where prisoners waited for interrogation and judgment.

What you can see today

Climbing the tower, you pass the old cells, the instruments of torture and the Thun executioner’s sword. Our special exhibition «Recht im Wandel – courts and condemned in the history of Thun» (2025, in cooperation with the Burgerarchiv Thun) traced this transformation – from the blood court to the modern justice of the nineteenth century, when the district court moved into the New Castle.

The exhibition has closed – the research continues: on the project page «Voices of the Forgotten» we publish new findings from the archives and answer your questions.