Visit Bollingen

Bollingen is a small hamlet on the north shore of the Obersee, the upper basin of Lake Zurich, within the municipality of Rapperswil-Jona in the canton of St. Gallen. It is a quiet spot of reed beds, meadows and scattered houses on a flat piece of shoreline, a short distance east of Rapperswil, and it would be unremarkable were it not for one building. Bollingen’s fame rests on this: in the 1920s the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung bought land here, and from 1923 he built a stone tower by the water that became his private retreat and a physical expression of his ideas.

Jung is one of the founders of analytical psychology, a thinker who shaped ideas about the unconscious, archetypes and the inner life, and who lived most of his life at Küsnacht on Lake Zurich. The Bollingen Tower was a different kind of place. He built it in stages over some thirty years, adding new sections as his thinking evolved, so that the tower is more a cluster of buildings than a single tower. There was no electricity or running water in the early period, and Jung cooked, carved stone and painted on the walls here. He described the tower as a place where he could be quiet and close to the elemental side of life, and it became a place for reading, writing and reflection. Visitors to his work often cite it as the most personal expression of his ideas.

Jung’s tower is privately owned and is not open to the public, so a visit to Bollingen is about the landscape rather than going inside. The lake shore is open to walkers, with a path that follows the water and links Bollingen with Rapperswil and other villages. The scenery is gentle and attractive: reed beds where water birds nest, meadows, lines of trees and, on clear days, the Alps beyond the lake. The area is a good place for slow cycling and for birdwatching, particularly in spring and autumn. It is rather quiet, and visitors are asked to respect the privacy of residents and the privately owned land, and not to enter fenced property.

The hamlet is easy to include in a day around Rapperswil-Jona. You can walk from the old town along the lake, or take a local bus, and combine it with the wooden footbridge to Hurden, the rose gardens and the lakeside promenade. There are few facilities in Bollingen itself, so bring water and plan a meal in Rapperswil.

A visit suits readers of Jung, people with an interest in the history of psychology and anyone looking for a quiet shore walk. Do not expect a museum or an organised experience, and take it as a pilgrimage to a landscape and an idea.