Zibelemärit

Braids of onions

From the official start at six in the morning — and many visitors come earlier — thousands of people crowd the lanes of Bern’s upper old town, the Bundesplatz, the Waisenhausplatz and the Münsterplatz. Farmers sell onions and garlic braided into plaits and wreaths, and decorations and figures made from onions. In 2025 there were 359 stalls in all, and 98 of them sold about 35 tonnes of onions between them. In the afternoon, from about 4 pm, the market dissolves into a wild confetti battle.

From the Martinmas fair

Bern held an autumn market as early as the fifteenth century. Called the Martinimesse, after St Martin’s Day on 11 November, it was where townspeople stocked up for the winter, and in 1439 the authorities made it a toll-free annual fair. A popular legend says the onion market was a reward for the people of Fribourg, who helped Bern after the great fire of 1405, but historians have found no evidence for it. According to the Bernese folklorist Rudolf J. Ramseyer, the onion market itself began in the middle of the nineteenth century, when farm women from the Seeland and the canton of Fribourg — especially from the vegetable-growing slopes of Mont Vully — started bringing their produce to the Martinmas fair. Their braided onions soon became the star of the market. The Zibelemärit is listed among the living traditions of Switzerland.