Interlaken Monastery

12th-century Augustinian monastery with surviving medieval cloisters, now the district government offices

The Augustinian monastery at the heart of Interlaken is easy to walk past without realising what you're looking at — the main buildings now house the Interlaken district government and look more administrative than sacred. But the medieval cloisters tucked behind the facade are the real thing: a well-preserved 12th-century arcade surrounding a quiet courtyard garden, unchanged in its basic structure since the monks walked here.

The monastery church, now the Protestant parish church, retains its Romanesque core. The grounds are open to visitors and provide a moment of quiet that the main tourist strips entirely lack. The site is just off the Höhenmatte meadow, easily combined with a walk along the Hoheweg.

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A story
The monastery gave Interlaken its name — "inter lacus," between the lakes. Founded in 1133 by Augustinian canons, it was one of the most powerful religious institutions in the Bernese Oberland for four centuries, controlling vast landholdings on both lake shores. At the Reformation it was dissolved, and the buildings passed through various secular hands before eventually becoming government offices — an unusually mundane fate for a medieval foundation, though the cloisters survived the transition intact.