Visiting all 26 Swiss Cantons in One Day: A trip to the Swiss Open Air Museum, Ballenberg

A Day at Ballenberg

You can follow along with our walk using the interactive map above

At some point, nearly every school child in Switzerland (whether they want to or not) makes a pilgrimage to Ballenberg, Switzerland’s Open-Air Museum on a ridge just outside of Brienz in the heart of the Berner Oberland. This microcosm of rural Switzerland has been operating since 1978 and hosts over 100 transplanted buildings from all across the country. Some were in a sorry state when they were moved, others were just in the way. All, luckily, found their way to this magical place for a second chance at life.

It's no secret that I am a fan of architecture and design but this place really has something for everyone. Hands-on activities, workers dawned in traditional garb, carriage rides, farm animals, working mills, petting zoos, the list goes on and on.

This week, rather than our typical excursion, we thought we would mix things up a bit and make a short walking tour of Ballenberg. We will explore the different regions of Switzerland and take in some of the similarities and differences from rural life in Switzerland today.

Our trip to Ballenberg really changed my perspective on the landscape of Switzerland. I now see historic buildings everywhere we go, hidden in plain sight. It has added a whole new dimension to our Swiss travels and we think it will for you as well.

Thanks for joining us!

Getting to Ballenberg

From Interlaken Ost, the journey to Ballenberg is usually quite straight forward. A train ride to Brienz brings you to a bus over the hill to the gates of Ballenberg. At the time of this writing however, the train line is currently closed. An exceptional storm moved through the Berner Oberland in August sending a debris flow straight down the rail line into Brienz Station. Quite a bit of damage also occurred along the historic Brienzer Rothornbahn line which is now closed for the season 2024.

Hopefully by 2025 all of this damage will be cleaned up but, in the meantime, you can still get to Brienz (and on to Ballenberg) fairly easily via a replacement bus service between Interlaken Ost and Brienz or a boat ride on the lake. We took the boat to Brienz and then the train back which made for a lovely day trip.

From Brienz, the bus winds its way up through the hills to Hoffsteten bei Brienz where Ballenberg is located stopping along the way at the famous Trauffer Factory and Museum which makes the ubiquitous little painted wooden cows that you find all around Switzerland.

There are two main entrances to Ballenberg, East and West and the same bus stops at both. Our tour starts at the West entrance and ends at the East entrance.

A day pass to Ballenberg at the time of this writing is 32 CHF (about $38 USD or €34) for adults and half that for kids. There are also some additional options for families and entrance is fully covered by the Swiss Museum Pass and the Swiss Travel Pass.

One of the historic farmhouses at Ballenberg

Hopping into a Bernese Time Machine

As soon as you are past the amusement park-esq entrance station, the path into Ballenberg leads you through the forest and back to a simpler time before electricity and cars. In that spirit, we spend most of the day on our feet exploring the buildings and landscape.

The idea of Ballenberg is by no means unique. The museum is one in a long line of European open-air museums that started in Scandanavia around the turn of the 19th Century and boomed in the 1950’s to 1970’s. That said, today’s Ballenberg is extensive. It is the only open air museum in Switzerland with such a diverse range of buildings.

When Ballenberg’s 66 hectares (c. 163 acres) opened in 1978 there were only about 25 reconstructed structures. Today, there are over 100, covering 13 themed regions with buildings from nearly every canton of Switzerland.

We start our walk in the Bernese Midlands (the area north of Bern). The first couple buildings, a 19th Century Industrialist’s Villa transported from Burgdorf and a similarly aged horse stable from Glarus are possibly the most out of place buildings in all of Ballenberg which focuses primarily on rural life but they offer an easier transition from the 21st century world outside of Ballenberg. The villa is built in a chalet style which adopted architectural principles from many of the buildings we are about to see but still offered ‘modern’ amenities.

An industrialists villa from the 19th Century

The best part about Ballenberg, most buildings are open to explore. After plodding around the finely appointed villa (which seems much smaller on the outside than it proves to be on the inside), we move on to a typical village setting with the Alter Bären Restaurant and Farmhouse and a collection of other traditional farm buildings and gardens.

The late 17th Century Granary is the oldest structure in the Bernese Midlands but after a quick loop, we find ourselves amongst the even older early 17th century buildings of the Central Midlands, the area of Aargau. While you could easily find most of the buildings of the Bernese Midlands ‘out in the wild,’ the thatched roof farm houses in the Central Midlands are far more rare. It’s not something you get to see very often.

The Alter Bären Restaurant at Ballenberg

Thatched Roof Farmhouses in the Bernese Midlands

On to the Romandie

After visiting with the piglets in the pig sty, we head to one cool farmhouse from Baselland (frankly underrepresented at Ballenberg if you ask me) and the start of the Jura region. After the Alps, the Jura is Switzerland’s second substantial mountain range. From outside of Aarau, the Jura range heads southwest towards Geneva where it forms a portion of the natural Swiss border with France.

The German-speaking half cantons of Basel-Landschaft and Basel-Stadt and the French-speaking Canton of Jura stand separated from the rest of Switzerland (and from each other) on the western side of the mountain range.

While Basel, the industrial and pharma capital of Switzerland is well connected, Switzerland’s northwestern frontier of Jura remains incredibly rural and is one of the more contentious regions in modern Swiss history.

In 1979, the French-speaking Canton of Jura officially split off from the majority German-speaking Canton of Bern but, even today, there are still fights to realign cantonal boundaries. This past week, the fate of the (currently) Bernese Jura town of Moutier was on the ballot as they look to officially join the Canton of Jura.

A bit of a hill takes us up to a traditional Jura farmhouse and tilery, firmly into the Romandie, French-speaking Switzerland. The tilery is quite interesting and you can still see tiles being fired today. Likewise, the farmhouse hosts hands-on activities and some of the animals that roam the grounds of Ballenberg. After exploring the buildings here, we backtrack. Ironically like the way to the Canton of Jura, the path at Ballenberg is also a bit of a dead end.

To continue our tour of the Romandie we head back down the hill past the Baselland house and another Farmhouse from the Bernese Midlands into Western Switzerland, buildings from the Cantons of Vaud, Fribourg, and Geneva.

Walking up to the tilery in the Jura section of Ballenberg

The Baselland House at Ballenberg

My favorite house at Ballenberg, 18th Century Farmhouse with a Pigeonry and lovely vegetable garden, can be found here in the Western Switzerland area. The bulding hosts dual stables which flank a central living quarter, and the aesthetics and setting are just downright idyllic.

My favorite farmhouse at Ballenberg

From the Farmhouse we head downhill towards Ticino, the Italian speaking region of Switzerland.

A Taste of Italian Flare

The biggest building transported to Ballenberg is far and away the 13th to 19th Century Farmstead and working Osteria, a small restaurant. The Farmstead is really a complex of buildings surrounding an inner courtyard constructed over several centuries to fit changing needs. While there are several places to eat at Ballenberg, the wine and simple menu at the Osteria called to me.

After taking in a quick lunch and exploring the Farmstead, head just up hill from here to the foundations of an old building now hosting some eager climbing goats. The foundation stands testament to the greatest risk to historic buildings in Switzerland, fire. Some years after its reconstruction at Ballenberg, a stray ember brought down this historic house. While a replacement could have been constructed on the site, it is not really in the ethos of Ballenberg where almost every building is an actual transplanted historic structure. At least the goats still seem to like it…

Continuing on the path we pass an early 16th century farmhouse and granary where I nearly knocked myself clean out walking up the stairs straight into a wooden cross beam. Beyond the smack to the head, this was one of the more fascinating structures at Ballenberg. Originally built in 1515, the house’s rough hewn beams and drafty, sparsely appointed, rooms spoke to a rough and humble life, quite different from today’s Switzerland.

Continuing on, head still buzzing, we made our way past a working vineyard and several traditional wine growers’ cottages before reaching the steepest and roughest section of our tour.

Honestly, most of Ballenberg is very tame so, when I say rough, I really mean you can’t push a stroller or wheelchair up it. The section is a steep single-track trail so be sure to bring comfortable and sturdy shoes. You will end up walking quite a bit at Ballenberg anyway so you will probably appreciate them either way.

Exploring so many different architectures, it’s easy to forget that you are still in a quite naturally beautiful part of Switzerland here at Ballenberg. The views up the valley from the path are spectacular. You can even see the waterfalls between Brienz and Meiringen that we have mentioned in previous posts. At the top of the hill, we find ourselves back in German-speaking Central Switzerland.

The Farm Complex and Osteria at Ballenberg

Goats climbing on the remains of a building at Ballenberg

One of the oldest wooden structures at Ballenberg

View from Ballenberg

Back to German Speaking Switzerland

Without a doubt, the highlight of central Switzerland is the petting zoo where you can crawl your way into the pen with some small goats and chickens. On our latest visit, we were distracted by the animals and were already starting to get a bit worn out at this point, so we didn’t go inside many of the buildings here, but I am sure there is plenty more to explore.

Tucked in a corner of Central Switzerland behind a carousel is a hay barn, the lone contribution from the Canton of Graubünden in the far south-east of Switzerland.

From here, the tour heads up to the East Midlands, mostly the Canton of Zurich, and on to Eastern Switzerland. The East Midlands hosts quite a few buildings, perhaps not so surprising given the rapid urban expansion of this region over the last few decades. Eastern Switzerland (including Graubünden) has far less representation at Ballenberg. No great surprise given the stronghold that places like Appenzell have on their history and culture.

Looping back towards Central Switzerland, we take a sharp left and head into the Alpine Economy region. Here you can learn about cheese production and see many barns relocated from high in the Alps. Many structures in the Alpine region were never lived in permanently, only when the animals were moved to the Alp for the summer, so they tend to take on a bit of a rougher log cabin stature.

From the Alps we follow the path down the hill and into the Valais. Among other structures we pass a water driven mill grinding grain the way it’s been done for centuries before electricity, a small chapel (which I was a bit surprised to see here), and a quite large 16th century house.

Traditional alpine herders quarters

A traditional grain mill from the Valais

From the Valais, we head back just a bit to end up in the Berner Oberland, the region Ballenberg calls home. Just past the Valais is the Eastern Entrance to Ballenberg where we complete our tour and catch a bus back to Brienz.

If you need an apéritif after your explorations, there is a chocolate and ice cream shop, a restaurant, and a gift shop just beyond the entrance where you can buy many of the products produced at Ballenberg.

All said, our walk around Ballenberg was about 5 kilometers but you could easily reduce or extend that by exploring more or less or skipping sections.

We hope you enjoyed our visit to Ballenberg. If you did, check out the other articles in our Discovering Bern series or join us as we visit every one of Switzerland's Cantons in person in 2024 on our One Year: 26 Cantons series!

Until next time, gute Reise, and feel free to leave a comment on one of our social media platforms!