Library am Guisanplatz

From army to population protection, geopolitics, disaster prevention and civil defence: the Library am Guisanplatz – known as the Military Library until 2007 – is an information resource on security issues and a historical documentation centre. History begins with the institution itself: it was founded in 1848 by General Henri Dufour. The documentation system has been computer-assisted since 1975.
Several special historical collections are to be found here, including 9,000 digitised portraits, the Heberlein autograph collection, the Schauenburg collection of 17th and 18th century maps or the Tscharner collection, which, like those of Schafroth and Keller, gives information about Swiss citizens in foreign service. Visitors with an interest in political changes down the centuries, will find old atlases here from the 16th to the 19th centuries.