<div><p>Bern's emblematic bears, a big tourist draw in the Swiss capital, completed their move out of a 16th century pit on Sunday into a spacious, purpose-built riverside park.</p><p>City authorities said about 40,000 people turned up to celebrate Finn and Bjoerk's move into a 6,000 square metre (65,000 square foot) enclosure that includes a 100-metre swimming pool on the banks of the river Aare.</p><p>Passers-by on Nydegg bridge will be able to watch the bears clamber around their enclosure -- which at 24 million Swiss francs (15.8 million euros, 23.8 million dollars) cost twice much as originally budgeted.</p><p>Bears had been kept in a small pit in Bern from 1513 as a tribute to the city's founder, Duke Berthold V of Zaehringen, who decided in 1193 to name his settlement after the first animal he would kill while hunting.</p><p>His victim turned out to be a local brown bear -- "Baeren" in the German language -- and thus a male bear became the centrepiece of the city's coat of arms.</p><p>Since bears now are extinct in Switzerland, Bern has imported its mascots from abroad. Bjoerk and Finn are Danish and Swedish respectively; they are soon to be joined by two orphaned cubs donated by Russia.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=61945471&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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