Wil Castle

Wil Castle
	Wil Castle from the east.
Creation time :	13th century / 16th century
Conservation status:	receive
Standing position :	Noble
Place:	Grosshöchstetten
Geographical location	46 ° 54 '29.3 " N , 7 ° 36' 28.9" E Coordinates: 46 ° 54 '29.3 " N , 7 ° 36' 28.9" E ; CH1903: 612 905 / one hundred ninety-five thousand two hundred and forty-one

The Wil Castle or Wil Castle is a castle in the district Schlosswil the community Grosshöchstetten in the canton of Bern , Switzerland .

history

The rule of Wil originally belonged to the Barons von Wiler, who are mentioned in 1146 in connection with the Zähringers . Later rulership rights and parts of the building were split up, until Burkhard von Erlach reunited the parts in 1514 . In the 17th century the estate was owned by the von Diesbach family , and from 1719 by the Frisching family . With the fall of the city and republic of Bern in 1798, the patricians' rulership rights went to the canton of Bern. After 1800 the keep served as a granary for a long time. In 1812 the state of Bern bought the domain and set up the headquarters of the administration of the newly created Konolfingen district here . In 2011 the castle was sold to the entrepreneur Matthias Steinmann as part of the cantonal administrative reform.

After the castle fire in 1546, Niklaus von Wattenwyl rebuilt the castle, including the keep. Around 1725, a rich French garden was laid out, of which terrace walls , path systems, a pond , a small avenue and a round tree on the west side, but above all the 500-meter-long main avenue with an adjoining tree room, have been preserved. The two garden pavilions are the remains of former corner towers of the medieval curtain wall . In 1780 the main facade was redesigned in Baroque style . A comprehensive restoration was carried out in 1936 and 1937.

The castle has been owned by Berakom AG since 2011, as has Ursellen Castle in Konolfingen since 1980, and is managed by the Steinmann Foundation. Schlosswil is open to the public.

literature

Wolf Maync: Bernese residential castles. Your history of ownership , Bern 1980.
Bernhard Schmid and Franz Moser: Castles and Palaces of Switzerland , Vol. 10, Basel 1942, pp. 17–21.
Ernst Werder: Castle and Lordship of Wil. A contribution to the history of the Konolfingen office , Bern 1938.