Court rules night-time church bells can continue in Swiss town

The Swiss Federal Court in Lausanne has ruled in favour of a church near Zurich that wants to continue ringing its bells throughout the night. The verdict overturns previous local rulings in favour of the complainants, a couple from the town. In a case that could set a precedent for other church-bell practices around Switzerland, the Federal Court decided against the recommendations of the local court in Wädenswil, which had upheld the complaint of two disrupted town-centre residents. The couple backed their case with a scientific study carried out by the federal institute of technology ETH Zurich, which carried out a test to show that noise of the bells reached 48 decibels when the windows were slightly ajar. Levels of 40-45 decibels can be disruptive, the study said. + Read the background to the Wädenswil case + Church bells in Switzerland: joyful or disturbing? The tradition of the Protestant church in Wädenswil is to ring the church bells every 15 minutes, through the ...