St. Peter's Island
The St. Peter's Island (French Île Saint -Pierre ) is the only island of Lake Biel in the Bernese Seeland in Switzerland. It lies in the southwest of the lake at Erlach, is connected by a very flat promontory with the mainland since the second half of the 19th century and thus actually a peninsula. However, an artificial and passable for boats puncture the port of Erlach separates from this headland from the mainland.
The island is only a maximum of 750 meters wide, with a length of 4.7 kilometers, in the north-east. Near the shore it is in places only 180 meters wide. The surface area is 1.76 km ². The highest elevation, the Riedmatt with an absolute height of 474 meters ( 45 meters above the lake ), located in the north- east. Before the first Jura water correction, which was completed in 1891 and resulted in a lowering of the lake level by 2.5 meters, there were two islands, as the map shows: the then much smaller St. Peter's Island in the north-eastern area of the island today, and the even smaller Chüngeliinsel approximately 700 meters southwest of it. These two islands emerged as the Lake Biel in the last ice age as a remnant of the retreating glacier. They grew up together through the Jura water correction to a, and a nearly three -kilometer extension towards southwestern lake shore at Erlach was dry. On this promontory since then connects the Heather Lane Erlach with the island. For extreme floods, this compound can be partially flooded. The name Chüngeliinsel is still used on current map. There, a survey of 444.7 meters, is found, or about 16 meters above the lake.
The now and then flooded and highly diverse Heather Lane and the forests on the island are protected.
Around 1127 a Cluniac monastery was built on the island, which today serves as a guest house. The philosopher Jean -Jacques Rousseau stayed anno 1765 six weeks at the island sharecropper before he was driven here by Berner aristocrats. Even today, a monument on the island to him. Goethe, too, the historian Coke, Empress Joséphine and the King of Prussia, Sweden and Bavaria have visited the island.
Today, the island is owned by the civic community of Bern. Politically part of the larger northeastern part of the island to the community Twann, and the near-shore south-western part to Erlach.
The vineyard of St. Peter's Island goes back to the time of the Cluniac order, which was established on the island in the 11th century. In 1530 St. Peter's Island and the Rebgut went to the hospital in Lower Bern, today Burgerspittel over. The monastery buildings were then successfully redeveloped for hotel and restaurant operation. Since 1965, the Rebgut the city of Bern keltert the island - wine for the civic community in Bern La Neuveville. As of 2009, the Rebbaubetrieb now was leased by the civic community of Berne, which remains landowner of St. Peter's Island, to the Rebgut the city of Bern. The successful and focused on sustainable quality improvement collaboration is thus secured for the future.
The island has only one building complex, which is now a restaurant and a monastery hotel with the farmed by island farmers farm (the only inhabited all year round building), and a group of twenty or weekend cottages, the Chüngeliinsel had been built along the Heidewegs southwest before an absolute Baustop ( ) and the ban was introduced on 19 May 2003.
Way to reach the island by boat, as well as von Erlach forth on foot or by bicycle. Very popular, the island is known for numerous barbecues right on the water.
Gallery
Hiking trail on the island of St. Peter