Museums

The only museum dedicated to the Swiss Alps introduces the visitors to cultural and natural pecularities of the Alpine world. The journey of discovery into the past and present of the Swiss Alps and their cultural and natural peculiarities is accompanied by videos, commented slides, multivision, info-stations, representations, and impressive originals.

The Swiss Open-Air Museum at Ballenberg shows Switzerland as it used to be.

The Museum will be closed until November 2008 for renovation work.

Visit the Gruyere Museum and discover local traditional ways and customs, and the treasured heritage of the area: poyas, sculpted spoons, wardrobes and costumes are displayed in a modern setting.

This museum contains the most comprehensive collection of historical and artistic documents, accounts and miscellany spanning six centuries relating to the Swiss patriot, William Tell.

In the Frog Museum, you will find something that is truly one of a kind: a collection of 108 stuffed frogs arranged in scenes portraying everyday life in the 19th-century.

The exhibitions in an area of 7,000 square metres allow you to see fabulous archaeological, fine art and applied art treasures. The archaeological section gives you the chance to immerse yourself in local and regional prehistory, Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquity and Etruscan, Greek and Roman civilizations.

The Natural History Museum is one of the most modern in Europe. Along the two kilometers of corridors over four floors, you will encounter 3,500 mammals, birds, vertebrates, invertebrates and numerous stuffed specimens of the regional, exotic and marine wildlife.

Whether through sculptures, masks, jewels, ritual objects, cloth and all types of ornaments, or through forms, styles and materials, so-called primitive man has always gone in search of beauty and the expression of it.

More than 10 centuries' worth of Chinese and Japanese art are displayed in the Baur Collections, a marvellous voyage through Eastern civilizations. Presented with impeccable sobriety and elegance, the multitude of pieces assembled by Alfred Baur is of exceptional quality.