William Tell
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William Tell is a folk hero of Switzerland.
According to the legend, Tell was an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow who assassinated Albrecht Gessler, a tyrannical reeve of the Austrian dukes of the House of Habsburg positioned in Altdorf, in the canton of Uri. Tell's defiance and tyrannicide encouraged the population to open rebellion and a pact against the foreign rulers with neighbouring Schwyz and Unterwalden, marking the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy. Tell was considered the father of the Swiss Confederacy.
Tell is arrested for not saluting Gessler's hat (mosaic at the Swiss National Museum, Hans Sandreuter, 1901)
Tell's leap (Tellensprung) from the boat of his captors at the Axen cliffs; study by Ernst Stückelberg (1879) for his fresco at the Tellskapelle.
Page of the White Book of Sarnen (p. 447, first page of the Tell legend, pp. 447–449).
A depiction of the apple-shot scene in Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia (1554 edition).
Altdorf, Uri
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Altdorf is a municipality in Switzerland. It is the capital of the Swiss canton of Uri and retains historic town privileges. It is the place where, according to the legend, William Tell shot the apple from his son's head.
Altdorf, Uri
Altdorf, 1900.
Wilhelm Tell memorial in Altdorf, c. 1900.
Aerial view from 400 m by Walter Mittelholzer (1922)