This year the city is holding a series of centenary celebrations. This perfectly preserved medieval street plan prompted UNESCO to award Bern World Heritage status.WHAT?The main station’s tourist office organises an excellent guided stroll through the beautiful old town. It runs daily, June to September, at 2.30pm from the office, and lasts for an hour and a half, for Sfr15 (£6.60).Towering above Bern’s old town is the spire of the late-Gothic M?er – at 100m, the highest in Switzerland. Bern was an early convert to the Reformation, and although most of the church treasures were destroyed around 1528, some notable pieces survived – principally the extravagant sculptural depiction of the Last Judgement that adorns the main portal of the cathedral. This is one of the only remaining unified examples of late-Gothic sculpture in Europe, and shows in graphic detail the saved on the left, beatifically smiling, and the damned on the right, naked and howling in torment.Two of Bern’s most famous sons are 20th-century icons – and both have special celebrations planned this year. The western half of the old town, around Marktgasse and Spitalgasse is bustling with commerce; the older, eastern streets are gentler and slower-paced. En-suite doubles cost around Sfr140 (£62).WHY?It’s hard to think of a more beautiful and relaxing capital.

This is the most immediately charming of all Swiss cities: its quiet, cobbled lanes, lined with arcaded buildings, have changed barely at all in the last 500 years, but for the adornment of shop signs and the odd tram rattling past. The hills all around, and the steep banks of the River Aare, are still liberally wooded. Views, both of the old town and the nearby Alps, are breathtaking.Despite its political status, Bern retains a small town’s easy approach to life. The attraction is its ambience; traffic is kept out of the old town, and you could spend days just wandering the streets, caf?opping and window-shopping. Direct flights are available from Heathrow with British Airways (0870 850 9850; ) and Turkish Airlines 020-7766 9300; ); Turkish Airlines also operates out of Manchester. Flights from other UK airports are available on airlines such as KLM (08705 074074; ) via Amsterdam or Swiss (0845 601 0956; ) via Zurich.STAYING THEREIbrahim Pasha Hotel (00 90 212 518 0394; ), Terzihane Sok 5, Adliye Yani, Sultanahmet, Istanbul. In a similarly good location is the historic Landhaus, Altenbergstrasse 4 (00 41 31 331 41 66; ) Some rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows.

You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”On a quiet evening, looking out from the Lone Pine Memorial, where a plain white wall lists those whose bodies have never been found and the small square flat gravestone contain inscriptions of duty and nobility, it was difficult not to feel both the pride in the dead and, like Othello, “the pity of it, the pity”.SURVIVAL KITGETTING THEREThe nearest international airport to Gallipoli is Istanbul, which is served from the UK by a number of airlines. Inviting the ANZAC veterans back for ANZAC day in 1935, Ataturk gave one of the most moving speeches of reconciliation ever given at a battlefield, ending with the lines: “There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. You can walk it in an afternoon and shudder at the thought that nearly 11,000 Australians and New Zealanders died on this narrow front, a quarter of all who landed, and at least as many Turks. Total casualties on all sides were of the order of 50,000 in an Allied campaign that killed or wounded more than 300,000.From the Anzac front at least came the genuine tone of respect between the two sides that makes this battlefield so much a joint land commemorated by both sides. They were left to rot and to be memorialised in the lists of those whose remains lie unknown and unburied The cemeteries of the Western Front are full of tombstones.