Daily schedule

From listening to testing your balance, from building sandcastles to hide-and-seek – the playground at the ‘Alter Bären’ Restaurant (311) on the edge of the forest is a fun place for children of all ages. On the treetop path, you can see the world from above and then whiz down the slide at high speed.

Make your own butter: Shake cream until it turns into butter. If cream is shaken or beaten for long enough, it turns into butter and buttermilk. Try it – and enjoy your homemade butter on bread.

The individual roof tiles are heavy, but they keep out the rain for many years. Have a go yourself and help re-roof our houses. Use the spray can to test whether your roof is watertight.

You can touch the exhibits here – and join in fun, hands-on activities too. Feel free to explore the entire building. Depending on the day, experts will help you learn how to weave straw, do woodwork or even print bags.

In the dark kitchen of the farmhouse from Madiswil BE (321) farmers’ wives prepared the daily food. They stood in the smoke for many hours at the low stove - an everyday life that is hard to imagine. The smoke from the hearth fire served to preserve sausages, bacon and other pieces of meat. These days sausages hang from the ceiling in smoke - you can purchase these ‘homemade’ sausages in the Ballenberg shop.

In olden days baking your own bread was of great importance in order to put food on the table. Farmers’ wives would bake their bread in the oven houses, which were often owned by the local community. In the baking room of the Stöckli from Detligen/Radelfingen BE (333) the Museum’s bakers fire up the wood-burning oven every day in the early morning.

There’s a lot to do in the cheese storehouse. Lend a hand and help store the cheese wheels. Our younger visitors can carry a bundle of dry twigs on their backs using the traditional wooden frame. Try on clothes as they were worn 100 years ago.

There’s a fire! At Brandboden, you can pretend to be a firefighter. Fill the bucket with water and then use the hand-operated pump. Using all their strength they have to pump enough water to put out the fire. When the bell rings, you’ve beaten the fire.

Younger visitors can have a go at rearranging the Swiss Open-Air Museum – thanks to the magnetic pieces!

In the hut farmhouse from Villars-Bramard, Vaud (531) people cook as the farmer's wives used to do every day. Come by and try a bite. 

In the cellar underneath the Granary, Wellhausen (622), you can play with the toys of your ancestors. You can walk around on stilts, ride a hobby horse, look through children’s books, pile up building blocks, dress up rag dolls and play a game of ring-toss – who still remembers those old games and would like to try them out?

Bats feel right at home in this building. Use the webcam to observe a colony roosting and learn about the unique characteristics of these nocturnal animals. Children can change their perspective in a playful way and discover the world through a bat's eyes.

In the Farmhouse from Escholzmatt (741), on some days, it is shown how to weave willow into simple baskets.

How does the silk worm moth spin its precious silk cocoon? Find out how the extremely thin silk thread, which is up to 3 kilometres long, forms a cocoon.

The hobby workshop in the Dwelling from Matten BE (1021), invites you to do it yourself.

You can use a hand plane to finish wood surfaces, joints and edges. You can try out this tool at the workbench and take the pieces home with you. Found, leftover materials collected for recycling are also available for creative projects.

In the Small Farmhouse from Unterseen BE (1051) there is a small pottery workshop, just like the ones found in villages in the old days, when pottery was made by hand in small family enterprises. All the various stages of production are to be seen at Ballenberg, from the turning on the wheel, to the pre-firing (bisque firing), to the glaze firing, to the engobe decoration. The potteryware can be purchased directly in the pottery workshop.

The women weavers in the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum regularly sit at the 200-year-old loom in the weaving cellar, letting the shuttles glide across the warp. In the weaving cellar it is possible to purchase handwoven products such as the legendary “Znüni”, bread bags with the Haslital pattern, or towels and linen Kirschstein bags.

Here you can practise milking using a wooden cow. Settle yourself on the milking stool and work carefully, as this is the only way to fill the bucket.

Felt hats fresh off the press. The original workshop equipment is also still used for the production of felt hats. To make a felt hat, water is heated in a steam boiler and then poured, hissing and steaming, on to the hat press. It is an impressive sight to see how the blanks of felt are turned into shapely hats for men and women.

The cheese dairy in Ballenberg functions on an almost daily basis. In House (1361), the Alpine Cheese Dairy from Kandersteg BE, visitors can not only look at the various bits of apparatus needed for cheesemaking but also follow the process itself as it happens.

The table in the old living room and bedroom is a spot for lively and sociable exchanges. Take a seat – there’s coffee and tea ready for you.

Here, you can get a hands-on insight into our rich Alpine culture. Don a pair of Swiss wrestling shorts, learn how to yodel, dress like they did 100 years ago or use a wooden frame to carry cheese. Fun for young and old.

The pounding machine from the Bone mill from Knonau, Zurich (692) is almost entirely made of cast iron. The waterwheel rotates a shaft with eight metal arms. They lift the heavy iron pins, which fall onto the boiled bones under their own weight. The blows following one another in mere seconds crush the boiled bones until the catchment trough contains nothing but meal.

The loud puffing and wheezing in the Sawmill from Rafz ZH (691) can be heard from a long way off. The regular rhythmic noise of the machine is an almost daily feature at the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum when the sawyers start it up and begin sawing wood the old way. The drive mechanism is a showpiece in itself. The power is delivered by an overshot water wheel. The water shoots out of the channel from above, falls on to the wheel blades and sets the wheel in motion. The drive power is transmitted to the frame saw in several stages by means of giant cog wheels and transmission belts.