Ballenberg, Swiss Open-Air Museum

Every time you visit the Swiss Open-Air Museum Ballenberg you’ll discover something new. Start your Ballenberg visit with a stroll through one of the 109 historic buildings. From the modest home of a day-labourer to the impressive farmhouse of a large Bernese farming family: take a look into parlours, kitchens, dining rooms and bedrooms and imagine the daily life of the inhabitants. The buildings in the Swiss Open-Air Museum Ballenberg are all situated in well-tended cultivated landscapes. At Ballenberg, land is traditionally cultivated with old tools and equipment. Seeds are still sown in the fields using horses, a team of oxen ploughs furrows in the field. Farmers’ gardens are laid out according to historical patterns and almost forgotten varieties of vegetables and fruit are often grown in them.

Can you smell it too? The smell of freshly baked bread is in the air! In the bakery belonging to the ‘Stöckli’ from Detligen/Radelfingen BE, fresh Ballenberg bread is baked every day. Watch the bakers as they carry out their work or pay a visit to the alpine dairy from Kandersteg BE to discover how tasty Ballenberg "mutschli" are made using fresh milk. It’s not only food production that can be followed daily at the Swiss Open-Air Museum Ballenberg. Many old crafts are actively practised in the workshops: do you know what filoching is? How does traditional rope-making work? The Ballenberg experts present over 30 different traditional crafts, skills and professions.

Besides architecture, crafts and numerous exhibitions and activities, more than 200 farmyard animals bring life to the open-air museum. Observe the slow-paced but powerful oxen grazing, watch the awkward foal taking its first steps, let the cheeky goats tease you or please the little piglets with a caress. Here and there flocks of chickens cluck their way through the museum’s grounds or geese refresh themselves with a splash in the stream. There is always something going on in the pastures and stables at Ballenberg.