By Linda Tancs
William Tell is a Swiss folk hero symbolizing the struggle for political and individual freedom. According to the legend, Tell was an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow who assassinated Albrecht Gessler, a legendary 14th-century Habsburg bailiff at Altdorf, whose brutal rule led to the William Tell rebellion and the eventual independence of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Tell Museum in Bürglen collects historical, artistic and folkloric documents, writings, works, objects and depictions connected to Tell and to the founding history of the Swiss Confederacy. It’s housed in the Wattigwiler Tower on Bürglen’s Postplatz – the village in which William Tell is said to have lived.


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