Swiss Parliament Building

Four times a year, or once every 12 weeks, the national parliament in Bern is open to the public on a Saturday. One such Saturday, I roamed into the halls of legislation in both the upper and lower houses of parliament. While the Nationalrat is something of a House of Representatives, the Ständerat is a Senate, with the Bundesrat being the cabinet.

There’s no “Swiss President” in the sense that other countries have an elected leader of the country for as fixed term. Rather, the seven cabinet ministers rotate for one-year terms as president. Although the building looks quite large on the outside, the meeting halls are actually quite small. It is here that I am reminded of Switzerland’s poverty until recently.

Hidden behind the assembly hall of the Nationalrat is the Helvetica font written in different materials from around the world like copper from Chile, gold from South Africa, and silver from China. It’s a nice little Easter egg between the bear statues and glass tube elevators. Of course with everywhere I go I look at the architecture and one of the most colourful features is the domed stained glass ceiling in the Salle des pas Perdus with the shield of all 26 Swiss cantons.