Although still in use, the Bärengraben has been supplemented since 2009 by the adjacent BärenPark, a larger and more natural enclosure alongside the River Aar.

Legend has it that, in 1191, Duke Berthold V of Zähringen vowed to choose as namesake the first animal his hunt met in the wood that was to be chopped down for his new city.

[1] As a result, the BärenPark was opened in 2009, on the steeply sloping land between the Bärengraben and the bank of the River Aar.

The smaller pit was no longer used by the bears, but was used instead to give access to the Bärengraben's shop and to provide a performance space.

Confederate prison commander Henry Wirz remembers a childhood visit to "that ancient pit in Switzerland" in Chapter XX of MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Andersonville" (1955).