Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Nidau
Summary
Nidau is a municipality in the Biel/Bienne administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
Nidau is first mentioned in 1196 as Nidowe. In 1352, it was recorded in Latin as Nydow.
The remains of a number of stilt house settlements from the neolithic until the late Bronze Age have been found along the lake shore in Nidau. A La Tene artifact was discovered in the Thielle/Zihl canal. Several iron ingots which were probably from the Roman era were found in the old Thielle/Zihl river.
Along the river, a wooden castle was built in 1140. A second castle was built in 1180, which was replaced with the stone Nidau Castle in the early 13th century. The town was built south of the castle. It was either built or expanded just before the Battle of Laupen in 1338. The triangular town pointed toward the castle and had a main street that paralleled the river and ran north–south. Three cross streets ran west from the main street.
The last count of Nidau, Rudolf IV died in 1375 in a battle in the Gugler War. The next owner of the castle was the Prince-Bishop of Basel, Johann von Venningen. However, he was defeated in 1376 and the Counts of Kyburg acquired the castle. In 1379, Count Rudolf von Kyburg sold the castle and town to the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs then gave the castle as a fief to Enguerrand de Coucy, the former commander of the Guglers, in 1387. During the Sempach War, in May 1388, Swiss Confederation forces from Bern and Solothurn attacked and besieged the town and castle for seven weeks before taking Nidau. The castle was heavily damaged and the Swiss forces suffered heavy losses in the battle. Following the war, the town and castle were awarded to Bern in the peace settlement. Portions of the city were damaged or destroyed in fires in 1388, 1413, 1513 and 1743.
In 1425 Bern granted the town a charter, though only the 1548 version still exists. The town market and granary were first mentioned in 1411. A hospital opened in 1430 and a plague house was built in 1474.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.