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.

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

On some days, baking takes place at the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum. Delicious apple pies, tarte flambée, and much more are made. Guests are allowed to taste the delicacies.

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.

Bobbin lace-making is like weaving but with threads which are wound around spools of a type called bobbins. The threads are crossed over each other.

There’s a fire! At the ‘Brandboden’ our younger guests can pretend they’re in the fire brigade! When the bucket is filled with water, the hand sprayer is used. Using all their strength they have to pump enough water to put out the fire. When the bell rings, you’ve beaten the fire.

In the cellar underneath the granary (622), our younger visitors can play with the toys of their ancestors. Little ones can walk around on stilts, ride a hobbyhorse, look through children’s books, pile up building blocks, dress up rag dolls or play a game of ring-toss – now, how many of those old games do you remember?

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.

An elf and his helpers meet at the edge of the woods. They are the principle figures in the exhibition "Enchanted Forest" and lead the children from one theme to another.

The regular ring of a hammer can be heard from a distance as one approaches the Smithy from Bümpliz BE (1052). Courses run by the Ballenberg Course Centre are often held in the old village smithy.  Watch our blacksmiths at work at their powerful craft.

Bread and, naturally therefore, flour played a central role in the everyday life of the rural population in former times. The ingenious old water wheel mills still bear witness to those times today. The Mill from Törbel VS (1121) in the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum demonstrates how the milling process worked. It is a so-called “Stockmühle”, that is to say, it has a vertical shaft and a horizontal wheel.

There’s a lot to do in the cheese storehouse. Let’s do our bit. Take a seat on the milking stool and try your hand at milking, or move the cheese wheel to a new storage spot. Our little guests can carry the cheese on their backs using the traditional wooden frame.  Try on clothes as they were worn 100 years ago.

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

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

The hand plane is used to finish wood surfaces, joints and edges. You can try out this tool at the workbench and take the pieces home with you. On the second table, found, leftover and collected materials for recycling are available for crafting. You can find ideas in the sketchbook on site, where you can also record your project for other visitors.

Together with the smithy and the wainwright’s workshop, the saddlery was an important part of rural industry. The saddlers made bridles, straps, and saddles as well as harnesses for hitching up the animals to the wagons. Hansruedi Blaser, a saddler in the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum, works for a few days during the season in the workshop in the Farmhouse from Lancy GE (551). He often demonstrates how smaller tasks were accomplished, such as how to sew buckles into leather or how to carve the leather for a strap.

The precision and dexterity required for shingle-making is demonstrated at the Brandboden when the museum’s shingle makers are at work there.

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.

Flax and wool are regularly spun into thread in the dwelling from Blatten, Valais (1111) and the farmhouse from Wila, Zurich (641). Patience and skilled hands are needed to spin plant fibres or animal hair. Spinning is a painstaking task. However, sometimes people would come together for a chinwag while spinning.

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 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.

The Ballenberg Open-Air Museum houses the former workshop of the brothers Alfred (1882-1972) and Hans Stähli (1887-1979) in the Dwelling from Brienz BE (1031). Modern-day wood carvers have equipped a new workshop alongside the old one of the Stähli brothers, and here they demonstrate how the tradition of wood carving has withstood the test of time.

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. Visitors are free to touch and try out everything in this room, from strapping on a milking stool to milking a cow. Our younger visitors can dress up in the kinds of clothes people used to wear 100 years ago, or try carrying cheese around on their backs.

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.