Brienz (571 m/1,874ft; pop. 2,800) attracts many summer visitors and has many more passing through on their way between Lucerne and Interlaken. It is beautifully situated on the lake, with steep wooded slopes rising above the town to the precipitous Brienzer Grat, which reaches its highest point in the Rothorn. The long, straggling little town
is the center of the Oberland craft of woodcarving, with a woodcarving school and the Swiss Violin-Making School (open to visitors). Beside the Protestant church, with an early 12th C. Romanesque tower, is the house in which the Swiss writer Heinrich Federer (1866-1928) was born. Other features of Brienz are the village museum in the Wiesplatz and the 19th C. wooden houses in the Brunnengasse, with beautifully carved friezes on the facades.