La Chaux-de-Fonds keeps its wealth well-hidden. The area around the railway station is not its best, it never is. It has the usual cheap shops and Chinese restaurants. African immigrants were hanging around, looking utterly lost in the quiet streets. However, “a new town transported from somewhere in anonymous Middle America” – as I had read it described beforehand – does not do it justice.

The first impressive feature you encounter when walking eastwards is a monumental fountain from the late 19th century. This marks the start of the city center. Most views on other historic buildings were blocked this Saturday morning by a local market. So I wandered on to the northeast. I had read parts of the extensive (“exhaustive” according to ICOMOS) nomination dossier and noted down some of the addresses of the most remarkable buildings. Rue Premier Mars numbers 6, 8 and 11 for example are the typical four stories high apartment houses with many windows on the top floors. They provided light for watchmakers’ workshops. A few blocks more to the east there were rows of colourful apartment blocks that housed the factory workers.

The richer part of the town lies more to the north and uphill. Here you'll see the Art Nouveau coming in. Many of its features are hidden though behind closed front doors. This is also the area where Le Corbusier's buildings are located - the Villa Jeanneret-Perret is a steep walk uphill, to a neighbourhood that must be occupied by millionaires.

In all, I walked around the city for about 3 hours. I finished at the watchmaking museum - a must for people who are interested in science and technical things. I did not like it much and was surprised that no space is given to show and tell the cultural history of the ordinary people who contributed to this industry. The city also could do with a good walking tour - there is one, but its yellow signs are small and scarce and there are no explanations about what you see. I picked up a leaflet at the Villa Jeanneret which provided me at least with some new addresses to explore. For example the Neo-Byzantine Synagogue and an old farm building that had survived the 1794 fire. But it missed out on other parts of town.