Münster, Schloss, Stift, Altstadt, château: Swiss heritage words on signs and tickets

Münster does not mean cathedral

A Münster in Switzerland is a town's great church, and the word says nothing about whether a bishop ever sat there. That is XTOUR's reading of how the operators of four Münster churches describe their own buildings, and their pages do not support translating every Münster as "cathedral".

The Berner Münster calls itself the worship space of the Evangelical-Reformed Münster congregation; its foundation stone was laid in 1421.[1] Its history page describes a city church: Bern was the builder and main funder, and in 1484/85 the council obtained from the Pope a Chorherrenstift St. Vinzenz, a college of 24 canons, to bring the church under its own control. The same page places Bern where the dioceses of Lausanne and Konstanz met at the Aare, and nowhere calls the Münster a bishop's church.[2]

Zurich's Grossmünster describes itself as an Evangelical-Reformed church in the Altstadt that, until the Reformation, was part of a Chorherrenstift and a parish church.[3] The Fraumünster is also Reformed, and its page says it grew out of a former women's convent; its tour listings say abbesses led it until 500 years ago.[4] In Zurich, then, the Münster names mark a college of canons and a convent, not a cathedral.

The Basler Münster is the one of these four with a bishop in its past. Its Reformation page says the iconoclasm of 8 February 1529 in the Münster settled the Reformation in Basel, that the cathedral chapter left the city, and that Bishop Philipp von Gundelsheim had already withdrawn to Porrentruy.[5] Its building history adds that the remaining canons moved to Neuenburg am Rhein and then to Freiburg im Breisgau, and that the city council took over the Münster as one of four parish churches.[6] The site still lists a bishop's throne among the furnishings.[7] XTOUR's reading is that Basel's Münster was a cathedral until 1529 and has been a Reformed parish church since.

St. Gallen shows the contrast. In St. Gallen, the Stiftsbezirk's own page says the diocese founded in 1823 acquired the former abbey church as its cathedral, and the site lists "Cathedral" alongside the Abbey Archives and the Abbey Library.[8]

XTOUR therefore writes "Bern Minster" and "Basel Minster" in English and calls a church a cathedral only where its operator does. See the guides to Bern's Old Town, the Zytglogge and the Minster and to Zurich's old town, the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster.

Stift, Stiftsbezirk, Chorherrenstift

Stift appears on Swiss heritage signs in two different senses, and both come from the pages above.

In St. Gallen, the Stiftsbezirk is the precinct of the former Benedictine abbey, and its English pages translate it as "Abbey of St Gall".[8] The Swiss Commission for UNESCO describes the ensemble as the Klosterkirche (abbey church), the Stiftsbibliothek (abbey library) and the Stiftsarchiv (abbey archives).[9] The abbey's page traces it from the hermitage of the Irish monk Gall in 612 to the adoption of the Rule of St Benedict in 747, and says the abbey was supplanted by the new canton in 1805; the complex now houses the canton's government and the diocese.[8]

In Bern and Zurich, the word appears inside Chorherrenstift, a college of canons attached to a great church, which is what the Berner Münster and the Grossmünster pages describe.[3][2] A Stift in a name is therefore a religious house or chapter; which kind depends on the place. A neighbouring word, Kloster, is the monastery or convent itself: the Fraumünster's convent is a Frauenkloster, and the Müstair World Heritage site is listed in German as the Benediktinerinnen-Kloster St. Johann, a convent of Benedictine nuns.[9][4] The guide to the Abbey District of St. Gallen and its Abbey Library covers the St. Gallen complex.

Schloss, Burg and château

English has one word, castle, where German has two, and the Swiss pages XTOUR read use both.

Schloss is the word both castle-museum operators XTOUR read use. Schloss Thun calls itself a medieval museum castle with four towers and a museum since 1888.[11] Museum Aargau lists four of them among its ten museum sites, Schloss Lenzburg, Schloss Hallwyl, Schloss Habsburg and Schloss Wildegg, next to two Kloster sites.[12] Thun is not one of XTOUR's Swiss destinations; XTOUR treats Bern only as a travel base for Thun Castle, which does not mean the castle is in Bern.[15]

Burg is the word the Swiss Commission for UNESCO uses for Bellinzona: its German list names the "Drei Burgen sowie Festungs- und Stadtmauern von Bellinzona", the three castles of Castelgrande, Montebello and Sasso Corbaro with their walls.[9] The French-language list on the Lavaux site managers' page calls the same three "les trois châteaux".[10] The same fortress is a Burg in German and a château in French, so the word alone does not tell a reader whether a place is a fortress or a residence. See the Bellinzona castles guide.

Château is the French word for both. Chillon's foundation uses "Château de Chillon" and "Chillon Castle" side by side on its English home page. That page also illustrates a second trap, about place rather than vocabulary: its title says "Château de Chillon in Montreux", while the address it gives is Avenue de Chillon 21, 1820 Veytaux.[13] XTOUR follows the address, and its records treat Montreux as a base for Chillon, not its location.[15] See the Château de Chillon guide.

Altstadt, vieille ville, città vecchia

All three mean old town, and the Swiss Commission for UNESCO uses all three for one site: "Altstadt von Bern / Vieille-ville de Berne / Città vecchia di Berna".[9] The Lavaux site managers' French list describes Bern's old town as founded in the 12th century on a hill ringed by the Aare, with 15th-century arcades and 16th-century fountains.[10] The Berner Münster's history page gives the founding year as 1191, by the dukes of Zähringen.[2]

An Altstadt is a district, not one building with a door: the Grossmünster and Fraumünster both describe themselves as churches in Zurich's Altstadt.[4][3] XTOUR's guides deal with the named buildings inside an old town and do not treat the district as a single attraction with an entrance.

For the full list of sites these words appear in, see Switzerland's World Heritage sites.