One goal for our first family trip to Europe was to visit a quintessential European town. Spending time in Solothurn, “Switzerland’s most beautiful baroque city” was the perfect start to our vacation. Nestled between the Jura Mountains and the River Aare, midpoint between the major cities of Zurich, Basel and Bern, Solothurn is the perfect place to spend a few days and experience a charming old town that feels every second of its rich 2,000-year history.
Solothurn is the ideal-sized town to explore. Within just a half day, we felt like we knew the city and while there is so much more to explore, we gained that comfort you feel when a place becomes familiar.
For our next trip to Solothurn, we want to spend at least 3 full days there. I desperately want to spend an afternoon sitting in an outdoor cafe, visiting more of the small shops and historical museums, and simply slowing down and soaking in this quaint town.
Our connection to Solothurn is a strong one, Julie’s maternal grandfather was born there. This was Julie’s third time visiting the town and though no relatives still live in this town, it’s an important place in our family history.
I think it may be a uniquely American experience to yearn for the places of our ancestors. To stand outside the house on Riedhotzplatz where my Grandfather was born (currently covered in scaffolding), to walk on the exact same cobblestones, to sit in the very same church pews as my great-great grandparents is such an awesome experience.
Not only is Solothurn important for our family history, but it embodies precisely what we wanted to experience. A European town that is both modern in amenities and ancient in feel and architecture. One of their tourism handouts describes it well “a combination of Italian grandeur with French charm and Swiss-German stability”. They nailed it with that description!
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What to do in Solothurn
In any new town, I love to visit the tourism office. It’s such a privilege of being an English speaker to walk into any TI, be greeted in English, and have racks of maps and brochures to browse. There are many popular destinations in and around Solothurn. The TI offers day trips, natural history, free maps and guides, etc. The first thing I do when I arrive in any city while traveling is visit the TI.
City Tour
We scheduled a city tour and had a great experience with our guide, Therese. With our limited time in the city, she seamlessly wove history, local knowledge, and tourism attractions into our tour. The day of our tour was our first full day in Europe. We had no luggage (the British Airways/ Heathrow travel disaster of 2020) and we were severely jet-lagged.
Therese’s tour was the perfect antidote to our travel woes. Within minutes we felt welcomed and cared for. Seeing such a beautiful and historical Swiss town felt like we had been transported into a fairy tale!
Our youngest daughter wrote about this tour in a school paper and her description makes me smile:
“We saw this cool historic town called Solothurn. It was a village from a long time ago and the buildings were very old and from before any of the wars. It was the only place that never got attacked. They lasted through the war because they never fought or helped any opposing side.”
While there may be a few flaws in her memory of the history of the town, she captures the essence well. As a young adult, I admired the neutrality of the Swiss. However, with age and experience, I feel an unease with neutrality… but that’s a discussion for another day.
St. Ursus Cathedral
I had visited the cathedral twice before, but this time, with the kids in tow, I felt an even deeper sense of awe at the grandeur of this building. Sitting in the pew, gazing at the ceiling, it is serene and beautiful.
The weather was not ideal on our tour day and we were not able to climb St. Ursus Spire for the birdseye view of the old town. Something to look forward to on our next trip!
The number 11
St. Ursus is a great place to start exploring the pattern of 11 within Solothurn! The tower has 3 sets of 11 stairs, there are 11 altars and 11 bells.
There are also 11 fountains throughout the city and an adorable clock that tells time according to an 11-hour schedule. This unique clock plays the Solothurn song on the hour (we missed it this time!) and is located on the UBS building on Amthausplatz 1.
Speaking of fountains, as I mentioned in our hiking in the Alps trip report, all the fountains in Switzerland are drinkable! Fill your water bottle with clean, cold, delicious water! In fact, be sure to do that since you’ll pay for water at restaurants.
Museums
During this short visit, we did not schedule time to tour any museums. That is another top item on our next trip. Their Natural History Museum is particularly interesting to us. We really want to see some of the dinosaur fossils from in this region of the Jura mountains (JURAssic Park… JURA mountains… yup!) However, we did visit the entrance to the Art Museum (Kunst Museum). With great pride, I will share that my Great Great Grandfather carved the gorgeous wooden doors to this museum.
Shopping
While I wish the circumstances were different, we spent quite a few hours during our short stay SHOPPING! I was thrilled to discover that Solothurn is the IDEAL shopping city. From the familiar H&M to the large Manor Department store to trendier teen-geared boutiques, we were able to find all of the essentials that we needed for our first few days in Europe in Solothurn’s Maretplatz.
I expected the prices to be high in Switzerland but truly, they felt comparable to the prices of clothes in the US. As a whole, no one in our family enjoys shopping. While the selection and prices were a pleasant surprise, frantically shopping for necessities on a hot day (culture shock for Americans: air conditioning is extremely rare in Europe) was not pleasant.
Mount Weissenstein
A highlight of our time in Switzerland was taking the cable car in the Jura Mountains at Mount Weissenstein. The TI gifted us the tickets and though the weather was dreary, we loved this experience! It was the girls first cable car and I think every minute of the journey was recorded on at least one person’s camera!
If you are traveling by train (my plan for our next trip!) there is a train station right at the Cable Car entrance. Then you travel for 10 minutes by cable car to Weissenstein at 1280 m.
The cable cars provide 360-degree views and are impeccable. I’m so thankful for their modern, enclosed cable cars that replaced the open-air wooden chairs! On a clear day, they proudly claim impressive views of the Alps, but we had to take their word on that. At the top of the mountain, there’s a small cafe and a neighboring restaurant/ hotel. We were antsy for some outdoor adventure and so we braved the rain and enjoyed a short hike.
We followed an easy “cow educational” walk. Since it was our first hike in Switzerland, we were thoroughly captivated by the cows with their bells! Granted, even after our 4th day of hiking in Switzerland, we were still googly-eyed over the cows and their bells.
We had enjoyed a huge breakfast at our hotel, but we were ready to dry off and have a snack. Near the top of Wessenstein, there’s a lovely restaurant called Restaurant Sennhaus Weissenstein. DELICIOUS! Outside, there’s a track with train scooters. Our 11 & 12-year-olds had a blast, despite the rain! Actually, if you look closely, there’s one rather large “kid” who also enjoyed the track.
Next time we visit Solothurn, we plan to return to the Jura mountains and enjoy some longer hikes and bike rides from the top of the Weissenstein.
Where to stay
When researching and preparing for our trip, I kept hitting the same roadblock, the hotel rooms were only for 3 people. Perhaps it was a “user error”, but I really struggled to find a room for a family of 4.
The Solothurn Tourism website had great resources for planning a trip, including hotels, but I used Google maps to help find this hotel. 10 out of 10! Gastof National is a short drive from the city center, on the way to the Mount Weissenstein cable cars.
We opted for their 4-6 person apartment and it is gorgeous! Perhaps because this was only our 2nd night in Europe (and our first night was a bit of a disaster with no luggage and a disappointing hotel), but this apartment was such a highlight for us! While we weren’t there long enough to really enjoy the spaciousness of the apartment, the well-supplied kitchen, the large living and dining rooms, or the bustling neighborhood, we absolutely loved our time at Gastof National!
We also enjoyed dinner there and the staff completely spoiled us. They brought us samples of different local specialties, out of the kindness of their hearts. I have a feeling we were the quintessential tourists, greeting each moment with heart emoji eyes. (They do not know that this little website of ours exists or that I would be writing about our stay.) I ordered their creamy “Solothurn soup” and it was delicious!
After breakfast, it was time to head to Berne…a much larger, but equally charming city. While we finally made this dream trip happen, we walked away with a longer bucket list of things to do the next time we travel to Switzerland. It certainly won’t be another 20 years before I return to Solothurn!
