Switzerland Guide
Fribourg
The Bourg
All routes from the new town converge in the Old Town's most historically important district, known as the Bourg, home to churches, the cathedral, the town hall and an array of mansions and patrician town houses. The Bourg's central square is a small space with four names. At the foot of Rue de Lausanne is Place de Nova-Friburgo with, opposite it, Place de l'Hôtel de Ville; next to it is a tree-lined square known either as Place des Ormeaux (Elm Trees) or Place de Tilleul (Lime Tree); and next to that is Place de Notre-Dame.
An impressive presence to one side is the late-Gothic Hôtel de Ville (Town Hall), a highly photogenic building dating from 1501–22, whose double exterior staircase was added in 1663. St George spears the dragon on a fountain statue dating from 1525 in the square in front of the building. A regular Saturday morning market spills over into the streets around, one of which, Rue des Épouses (Street of Spouses), is spanned by a decorative old sign attesting to the fidelity of the couples who once lived there. The dourly impressive Grand'Rue heads off down the hill, a virtually intact example of a seventeenth- to eighteenth-century street, complete with Baroque, Regency, Rococo and Louis-XVI facades jostling for position all the way down.