It has

  • an absolute jewel of an old town

  • lovely cafes and restaurants

  • remarkably few tourists compared to Luzern or Bern

  • a cultural scenes that blows much bigger cities (looking at you, St. Gallen) out of the water

Am I missing something? Why aren't more people singing the praises of Il Grande Soletta?

by t0t0zenerd

24 comments

  1. Underrated by who? People “doing” Switzerland in three days may not know it but the connoisseur love it.

  3. Well house prices are low so I would say underrated by many people.

  4. Not sure I can agree:

    * the old town is very small and so to say “Swiss-standard”, you find it in any town of its size

    * cafes and restaurants: I am really not interested in them

    * lack of tourists is awesome though!

    * never heard of Solothurn’s cultural scenes, what exactly have they got?

    To me it’s likely more entertaining than Olten, but say on par with Biel, Freibourg, Chur,… and any other tier 3 town in Switzerland

  5. Solothurn just kind of in a location were not much going on thats why its underrated. Its neither a first or second tier city, nor in the Alps. Also Berne close which takes the gravity. There many such old towns in Switzerland even.

  8. You can feel very solo in solothun and the tuna is not fresh

  9. 100 % agree. There are a lot of nice bars and restaurants along the Aare.

    If you like hiking, you have some nice opportunities in the area of Solothurn, for example the Weissenstein.

  10. Solothurn is considered the most beautiful baroque town in Switzerland And I live here

  12. Solothurn is indeed a great place but it lives in the shadow of the even greater Olten.

  14. Yeah i went there a week-end for my birthday this is a very cool town

  15. Can we please keep it underrated and not boast about it online? As a Swiss person I am happy for every scenic place that is not completely overrun by tourists.

  20. If youre ever bored and near Solothurn: Solothurn also has a neat, small but /free/ stone museum that talks about the cities’ history with masonry, quarries and architecture. Its a neat way to start your trip to solothurn so that you can enjoy the cities’ little architectural easter eggs (like eg. the Butt stone – Füdlistein) and their background even more

  21. having worked there for over 3 years, I agree it *is* a very nice town. however, the Altstadt is miniscule. it takes you all of 15 minutes to see the whole thing, no joke. there’s some interesting things to visit (cathedral for example) but tbh I’d struggle to fill an entire day trip to Solothurn unless there was an event on. there literally is fuck-all to do there outside of the bigger cultural events. the cafés and restaurants I would honestly not rate terribly high, as they are no different to the ones you’ll see in any Swiss town/city: overpriced, schicki-micki, gentrified, hipstery bullshit (if there is anything genuinely cool, I’d love some suggestions ofc).

    then there’s the *abysmal* traffic situation! I swear for a town of 15k people, there’s a lot of cars and a horrible traffic system. as a result, there’s a daily line of cars on all the main streets starting at 4pm. doesn’t help that Solothurners are legit the worst drivers I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve lived in Aargau and Züri-City!

    fun fact, until recently, the pedestrian crossing in front of the HB would switch from green to red *after* the cars had already gotten the green light.

  22. I went there two times. Yes it has charm but didn’t blew me away. I would prefer Aarau.

    But compared to Yverdon-les-Bains, where I currently live, the old city of Solothurn is way better.

  24. I grew up in that area. In the 1980s, there was little to recommend the city. The Main Street still had car traffic, and the city was small, ugly, and boring.

    Nowadays, old town and the river front are much nicer than back then, and there are more interesting stores and restaurants. The city still is small and in many aspects not very exciting (choice of cinemas and concert is minuscule), but if you like small towns and are willing to travel a bit for an occasional big city fix (Basel, Bern, and Zürich are all within reasonable distance, and public transit there is extensive), it can be quite livable.

    The one area the city has gone downhill recently is the train station, which seems to have picked up a very weird crowd in recent years.

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