The Hôtel cantonal de Fribourg, which is celebrating its 500th anniversary, is at the center of a rich book whose publication coincides with the completion of its renovation. The building, dear to the population, is one of the oldest and best preserved seats of power in Switzerland.
The book “L’Hôtel cantonal de Friborg 1522-2022”, a large-format, richly illustrated publication, was unveiled on Wednesday in the presence of the President of the Grand Council Jean-Pierre Doutaz as well as the State Councilors Sylvie Bonvin-Sansonnens and Jean -Francois Steiert. With 352 pages, it is edited by Aloys Lauper and Fabien Python.
Double anniversary
The Cantonal Hotel, sometimes still called City Hall, is doubly honored this year. The renovation work enabled the deputies to find a building restored and refurbished from top to bottom at the beginning of September, after more than two and a half years of exile, in Forum Fribourg, in Grange-Paccot, essentially.
The year 2022 also marks the 500th anniversary of the building, inaugurated on September 30, 1522. It was therefore a great opportunity to take a fresh look at the building, and thereby at the power and the elites who succeeded it practically without interruption for half a millennium, the speakers underlined.
Firmly encamped on its rocky outcrop in the heart of the historic city, the Hôtel cantonal de Friborg has experienced many ups and downs over the decades. The public demonstrations of the city and the canton have long converged there, whether official ceremonies, patriotic rallies or popular riots.
Specialists gathered
And the Place du Marché was once also the place of the straitjacket, the pillory and the burnings. If the first floor has remained the place of power and justice, the other levels have been used as a grain exchange, local archives, arsenal, prison or barracks for the gendarmes.
To retrace these 500 years of history, the Cultural Property Department, which was represented in the Salle des Pas Perdus by its chief Stanislas Rück, brought together the contributions of some forty specialists from all walks of life (historians, archaeologists, architects , engineers, restorers, artisans and artists).
The work brings together the various facets of an emblematic building. Many discoveries have enamelled the renovation work. The most spectacular is the discovery of a Renaissance mural (1531) on a wall of the former room of the Petit Conseil, which was for a long time the room of the Cantonal Court.
In the tradition of justice paintings, the biblical episode of Susanna and the Elders describes a case of perjury, a story that is more relevant than ever in 2022. The book, which includes a leaflet of the mural, is available in French or German.
This article has been published automatically. Source: ats