During the 2025 season, in addition to our historic buildings, traditional crafts and farm animals, you’ll discover a vibrant and blooming floral world along the 10 km interactive trail. Biodiversity you can see and feel.
In order to furnish the buildings, the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum collects objects from rural life and farming from the time before agriculture began to become motorised (before 1950). These items and related secondary information of all kinds relate to earlier ways of living, social structures and economic activities in the farming community, as well as crafts and commerce. Our collection currently holds over 45'000 objects.
After being meticulously taken apart brick by brick, the schoolhouse is now being reconstructed just as it was in the past. The bricks, which were separated and marked when the building was dismantled to indicate which storey they were from and which direction they were facing, are taken from where they were being stored outside the museum to the construction site, where they are sorted. Thanks to the detailed plans prepared beforehand, the particularly prominent bricks can be returned to their original position. This is especially important at the corners of the building, as they are very important for the static equilibrium of the schoolhouse. The whole thing resembles a giant jigsaw puzzle in which the masonry is being carefully reassembled.
Ballenberg
Swiss Open-Air Museum
Museumsstrasse 100
CH-3858 Hofstetten bei Brienz
Opening hours
10 April to 2 November 2025
10 am to 5 pm daily