Black on top, white below, no coat of arms: one of the oldest Swiss flags, documented in 1410, with several legends and no official meaning.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a square field, with a 1:1 ratio, divided horizontally in half. Black on top, white below and nothing else: no coat of arms, no figures and no borders in another colour.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
Fribourg was founded in 1157 by Duke Berthold IV of Zähringen
Flags of the World believes the battle flag was adopted around 1225
The city became sovereign in 1478 and joined the Confederation in 1481
Until 1803 the republic also used a coat of arms with a white castle on a blue field
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Fribourg is a field split in two: black on top, white below. Only two colours, and a meaning nobody has fully managed to explain.
Fribourg was founded in 1157 by Duke Berthold IV of Zähringen, the same family that founded Bern. Flags of the World believes the battle flag was adopted around 1225; its first certain evidence is from 1410. The city became sovereign in 1478 and joined the Confederation in 1481.
The design has not changed and no modern rule fixed it. Until 1803 the republic also used a coat of arms with a white castle on a blue field, which never appeared on a flag.
Coal and flour (legend)
the founding duke, lost from his hunt, slept on sacks of coal and flour and woke up stained black and white; that is why he gave those colours to the town. It is the most told story, and probably a myth.
Earth and water
another reading sees in the black the ploughed land and in the white the River Sarina.
Clerical habit
a third theory, born in the anticlerical nineteenth century, too late to explain the flag.
The oldest drawing of this flag is in the Swabian Mirror of 1410, where the mayor of Fribourg swears allegiance to the Duke of Austria.
Flags of the World finds no reliable source for the origin of the colours: all three explanations fit, none is proven.
Test what you have read about the flag of Fribourg.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Autor desconocido, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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