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.

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 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.

Certain parts of the festive costumes such as the headscarf or the gloves are filet crocheted or knotted, and filet crocheting is based on the same knot-tying techniques as those used for making a fishing net.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.