Bümpliz

Bümpliz-Oberbottigen is a Stadtteil (district) of the city of Bern, Switzerland. It is situated to the west of the city center and consists of the Quartiere (quarters) Bümpliz, Oberbottigen, Stöckacker, Bethlehem and Brünnen.

As the most recently developed district of Bern, Bümpliz-Oberbottigen is an amalgamation of Bümpliz, a formerly independent suburban municipality, with rural hamlets such as Oberbottigen and Riedbach and modern highrise housing developments. The tower blocks of Gäbelbach, Tscharnergut and Stöckacker, a heritage from the 1960s and 70s, are a prominent part of Bethlehem's cityscape. The most recent quarter, Brünnen, was formally established in September 2008 as part of an ongoing major urban development programme.

In 2006, the district had 31,343 inhabitants, 30% of which were foreigners, mostly South Eastern European nationals. This constitutes more than a third of Bern's entire foreign population. The apartment rents are the city's lowest, and 8.8% of the population received social welfare benefits in 2006, as compared to 4.6% in the city as a whole.

With a surface area of 2,023 hectares, the district is the city's largest. It is a bedroom community, home to 25% of the city's population but only the location of 9% of the city's workplaces.

The area of Bümpliz has been a center of habitation since about the 5th century BC, as indicated by the presence of La Tène and Völkerwanderung burial grounds, as well as the remains of an extensive 1st century Roman villa at the site of today's St. Maurce church. In medieval times and under the Ancien Régime, the dominion of Bümpliz – recorded as Pimpenymgis in 1016 and Bimplitz in 1235 – changed hands from the Empire to the lords of Bern and then numerous times among the patrician families of Bern, who built several palatial residences in Bümpliz.

The municipality of Bümpliz, founded 1798 in the course of the Napoleonic reforms, experienced a swift growth as a suburb of Bern after the 1860s. Financial difficulties forced it to agree to a merger with Bern in 1919. The new district continued to grow, in particular after 1945 with the construction of large-scale housing developments and satellite towns (Tscharnergut 1958–67, Schwabgut 1965–71, Fellergut 1961–64, Gäbelbach 1965–68 and Kleefeld 1968–72).

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