Where did Albert Einstein grow up and live?

📍Einsteinhaus, Kramgasse 49, Bern, Switzerland

1903 – 1905

“I lived at Kramgasse 49 in Bern from 1903 to 1905, on the second floor of a building in the middle of the old city's most beautiful arcade street, and it was in the small apartment there that I worked out the special theory of relativity. I was twenty-six years old, working days as a patent examiner at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property a few minutes' walk away, and spending evenings and weekends thinking about the nature of light and time and space. Mileva and I had very little money — the apartment was modest, the furniture minimal — but I had what I needed: a job that left my mind free, a city that was civilised and quiet, a desk by the window where I could think. The miracle year of 1905, when I published four papers that changed physics, happened in that apartment on Kramgasse. I have lived in grander places, but never a more important one.”

👍 LovedThe intellectual freedom that the patent examiner job provided — work that engaged just enough of my mind to keep it active without consuming the part that was working on physics. The beauty of Bern's medieval arcade streets. The quiet of a small Swiss city that had no idea what was being worked out in its midst.

👎 DislikedThe financial constraints of a young family with a modest income. The isolation from the major centres of European physics. The difficulty of getting academic work taken seriously when you were a patent clerk rather than a professor.

Map showing where Albert Einstein lived — Einsteinhaus, Kramgasse 49, Bern, Switzerland

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Albert Einstein's home at Einsteinhaus, Kramgasse 49, Bern, Switzerland

📍 Street view today

Sources: Isaacson, W. Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Simon & Schuster; Fölsing, A. Albert Einstein: A Biography (1997), Viking; Pais, A. Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (1982), Oxford University Press