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.

Bobbinlace 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.

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

The hand plane is used to work on wooden surfaces, joints and edges. You can try this tool at the workbench  and take your piece of wood with you. On the second table there are materials that have been found, are off-cuts or collected for recycling which are ready to be used for handicrafts. Find ideas on site in the sketch book. You can also record your project in the book 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 (494) when the museum’s shingle makers are at work there.

Want to let your creativity run wild in a room full of high-quality materials? Step into our silk workshop!

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 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 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.

Gather round the table in the herders’ old living room/bedroom in the Cheese Dairy from Kandersteg BE (1361) and enjoy some tea and coffee together.

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.

A waterwheel turns a wooden shaft from the Bone mill from Knonau, Zurich (692), the cam boom. Eight wooden cam pegs lift rams up and let them drop down again 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.

A waterwheel turns a wooden shaft from the Bone mill from Knonau, Zurich (692), the cam boom. Eight wooden cam pegs lift rams up and let them drop down again under their own weight. The blows following one another in mere seconds crush the boiled bones until the catchment trough contains nothing but meal.