Grabbing the back of your opponent’s shorts is what Swiss wrestling is all about. How much can these shorts withstand? Why don’t they rip when they’re yanked upwards? And who are the people involved prior to the shorts being donned at a Swiss wrestling competition? The special exhibition "Who wears the trousers? Schwingen – the Swiss wrestling tradition" is all about the strongest shorts in Switzerland.

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!

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 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.

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.

In the cellar in the granary from Wellhausen TG (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.

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.

Various different tools – gravers, chisels, hammers and all kinds of punches – are used to shape and decorate the surface of metal. In Alpine saddlery, leather items are trimmed with decorative metal fittings to be worn by farmers and Alpine dairymen and their livestock.

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.

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.

Sewing using a machine but zero electricity – is that possible? Come and try it out for yourself in the vintner’s house from Richterswil, Zurich (611).
Cottage industries were a vital source of additional income for large sections of the rural population. Individual family members and sometimes entire families would work as spinners, weavers, embroiderers and seamstresses at home and later in factories. They worked for an employer who delivered the materials and later collected the finished products. Aprons and shirts are examples of goods that were sewn. Experience this process up close and have a go yourself in the vintner’s house from Richterswil. 

Did you know that the cocoon of the silkworm consists of a silk thread that’s three kilometres long? In the space of just 30 days, the tiny little silkworm matures into a caterpillar measuring up to nine centimetres long. It then spins itself into a cocoon by turning over 250,000 times.

Discover this and other fascinating facts when you visit our silk workshop in the Farmstead from Novazzano (851), where children and their parents can get creative together and design their own silkworms using threads, yarn and fabric scraps. They can then take these little works of art home as a souvenir or add them to our caterpillar family up on display in the workshop. This experience offers an exciting insight into the world of the silkworm.

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.

Women and children once twisted straw right here at the farmhouse from Tentlingen. This was intricate work that required skilled hands. A hundred twisted cords would be exchanged for a loaf of bread – a modest yet welcome reward for mountain dwellers who had no other source of income in winter.

The stations of the themed trail are located in seven historic houses and a central installation (761). There are also interactive games and quizzes along the way, so visitors can get involved and share their own ideas about what it means, around the world, to be ‘on the move’. Why not get on the move yourself? Talk about what it means to be on the move across the world.

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 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.

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.