Burgdorf

Burgdorf stands beside the Emme below a castle recorded in 1080. The dukes of Zähringen founded a town around the castle in the late twelfth century; their successors, the counts of Kyburg, enlarged it and made the castle their seat. By 1300 the growing town filled its walls, enclosing an upper town and a lower quarter formed from the settlement of Holzbrunnen.

In 1383 a Bernese and Solothurn army besieged Burgdorf for forty-five days during a war with the indebted Neu-Kyburg counts. The defenders held out, but in 1384 the counts sold Burgdorf and Thun to Bern. Burgdorf retained its own council and courts and gradually acquired lands and rights in neighbouring villages. Fires destroyed much of the upper town in 1706 and the lower town in 1715. The French invasion of 1798 and the reforms of the Helvetic Republic brought an end to much of its old privileged order.