THUN (Fr. Thoune)  , a picturesque little town in the Swiss canton of Bern, built on the banks of the Aar, just as it issues from the Lake of Thun, and by rail 19 m . S.E. of Bern, or 171M . N.W. of Interlaken . It is the capital of the Bernese Oberland, the snowy peaks of which are well seen from it . It has 6030 inhabitants, mostly German-speaking and Protestants . The 18th-century parish church and the 15th-century castle rise in a striking fashion above the town, in the chief street of which are arcades (locally called Lauben) as in Bern . There is a museum in the tower of the castle, while in and near the town (in the Heimberg valley) are several potteries of local ware . From its local lords it passed by 1127 to the house of Zahringen, and on its extinction (1218) to the counts cf Kyburg . The heiress of that family brought Thun (and Burgdorf) in 1273 to the cadet or Laufenburg line of the Habsburg family, her mother having (1264) granted the town a charter of liberties that con-firmed an earlier grant of 1256 . In 1375 the town was mortgaged to Bern, to which it was sold outright in 1384 . From 1798 to 1802 Thun was the capital of the canton Oberland of the Helvetic Republic . (W .

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