Capital of the canton of the same name, it enjoys an incomparable view of the Alps and the Jura; its approximately 35 thousand inhabitants mostly speak French and consider themselves children of a sunny, nonconformist, and festive land.
Every summer, Neuchatel hosts hordes of street artists at the colorful Busker’s Festival, celebrates its cultural roots with the Romand Folk Theatre Festival, and in September, explodes in grape harvest celebrations. Its urban layout is very pleasant and rational, with residential neighborhoods resting on the slope of Chaumont and monumental areas concentrated between the lake and the hill. For the visit, it is advisable to start from the lakeside, where parking is also concentrated, and head to the old town via rue dell’Hotel de Ville, which boasts prestigious buildings such as the eighteenth-century theater, the Hotel Communal, a former orphanage also from the eighteenth century, and, at the corner with rue de l’Hopital, the mighty Neoclassical Municipal Palace. Also on this street, which is one of the arteries of the old town, is the beautiful Fontane de la Justice from 1547, with its effective allegory of different types of power (the pope, the sultan, the emperor, and the mayor). But the heart of old Neuchatel beats in Place des Halles, dominated by the Maison des Halles, a splendid sixteenth-century building, adorned with charming overhanging turrets topped with spires: once the ground floor housed the grain market and the first floor the fabric market. Having reached the characteristic crossing called Croix-du-Marché, one can take the lane that gently climbs the hill on which the Castle and the Cathedral stand. The former boasts origins in the eleventh century and, despite being heavily remodeled at the beginning of the 1900s, still shows its corner towers, cross-shaped windows, and a suggestive overhanging walkway on corbels. The Cathedral was instead built between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; originally a Catholic church, it embraced the Reformation in 1530. The exterior is a pleasant blend of Romanesque, Gothic, and Burgundian Gothic lines and forms, and one of the two towers is even nineteenth-century. The interior is divided into three naves, and in the presbytery stands out the beautiful sculptural group of the funerary monument of the counts of Neuchatel, the ancient rulers.
