It was on the 14th of December 1990, three weeks short of his seventieth birthday that Friedrich Dürrenmatt passed away in Neuchâtel. He had lived and worked in that city for almost 40 years.
Dürrenmatt's bequest of his literary holdings to the Swiss Confederation in 1989 gave rise to the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern in 1991. Thereupon Ms. Charlotte Kerr Dürrenmatt, his second wife, donated Dürrenmatt's former house and garden to the Confederation, under the proviso that these be integrated, based on plans drawn up by Mario Botta, into a future Centre bearing the writer's name. Her initiative thus ensured that her husband's artistic oeuvre would be assembled and presented in a suitable location. Botta came up with certain initial ideas already in 1992; construction got underway in May 1998 and was terminated in September 2000.

The Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (CDN) is a unit of the Swiss National Library. Taking its cue from Dürrenmatt's achievements, the CDN promotes an interdisciplinary approach to the relations between literature and the visual arts. The diversity of its agenda and the scientific support it lends to the Swiss Literary Archives makes the Centre an important bridge between Switzerland's French- and German-speaking regions.

狄倫馬特在1990年12月14日，距他70大壽生日的前三週，於納沙泰爾逝世。他在這城市生活與工作了將近40年了。
狄倫馬特在1989年將其文學遺產餽贈給瑞士聯邦，進而導致瑞士國家文學檔案館於1991年在伯恩成立。隨後他的第二任妻子，夏洛特·狄倫馬特 - 克爾，將狄倫馬特故居的房子和花園捐贈給瑞士聯邦，但前提是未來中心的命名須含作者的名字，並且依照知名建築師馬里奧·博塔(Mario Botta)的設計去規劃。因此，她確保了丈夫作品的統一收藏與展示。其實博塔原先在1992年就有初步的建築設計想法，但直到1998年5月才開始施工，並在2000年9月完工。

狄倫馬特納沙泰爾中心 (CDN) 附屬於瑞士國家圖書館。從狄倫馬特的成就中得到啟發，CDN提倡跨領域的交流，並推廣文學與視覺藝術。中心的活動多樣化並對瑞士國家文學檔案館的貢獻繁多，並成為瑞士法語區和德語區的重要橋梁。

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