Open Air Museum Ballenberg

Since the 1970s old farmhouses, stables, bakehouses or barns are no longer demolished when they are due to be replaced by modern buildings. Instead, the buildings are dismantled stone by stone, and rebuilt in the Ballenberg Open Air Museum.

What began in 1978 with 16 characteristic Swiss buildings, is today an extensive exhibition with about 100 residential and agricultural buildings from all over Switzerland, on a 66 hectare large area: this is the Ballenberg Open Air Museum. The historic buildings and their kitchens, chambers and living rooms illustrate rural life in Switzerland. 

But Ballenberg Museum really comes to life thanks to the original and authentic cultivation of useful plants, the over 250 domestic farm animals and thanks to the craftsmen and farmers who work with traditional tools. Thematic exhibitions and special events about culture and customs complement the offerings.

History

There are no dusty cabinets in the Swiss Open-Air Museum Ballenberg. Instead, you can visit and admire over 100 rural houses and farm buildings from all over Switzerland. Magnificent farmhouses, humble workers’ quarters, alpine huts and stalls, barns, store-houses, wash-houses and drying ovens provide architectural as well as socio-historical testimony to the everyday life and rural culture of the past.

These historical buildings could not be maintained at their original location and were, therefore, carefully dismantled and transported to the museum’s 66 hectares of land to be reconstructed. Kitchens, parlours, and other quarters provide insight into the daily life of rural Switzerland.

Representative houses of the different farmhouse styles of Switzerland make up, how-ever, only a part of the Museum. Gardens, fields, pastures and meadows, set up according to historical models, surround the farmsteads and houses. In the buildings, there are craftspeople who work with traditional tools, while various theme exhibits give you an insight into scenes of rural former days. Moreover, about 250 farm animals, representing the whole gamut of native domestic animals, provide lively and interesting scenes at Ballenberg!

At the end of the 19th century folklore museums made everyday objects and living conditions of the rural population accessible to a wider public. The systematic collection and exhibition of traditional cultural objects combined with educational goals and the emphasis on reaching a wide audience still characterises open-air museums today.

In 1891, the first open-air museum was opened on Skansen Island in Stockholm. Just 20 years after the founding of the Skansen Museum already almost 20 important open-air museums existed in northern Europe. The most spectacular growth of this kind of museum happened, however, during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s of the 20th century, when innumerable institutions of this kind, among them the first industrial museums and non-European open-air museums, were founded.

Even when the first open-air museum in Scandinavia was opened, the idea of having an open-air museum in Switzerland had been launched. However, neither the plans for a “medieval Swiss town” at the Historical Museum of Berne nor the discussions as to whether or not the Swiss National Museum in Zurich should add rural buildings to its collection led to anything. It was not until 1963 that the Swiss Federal Council set up an expert commission to consider the possibility of creating a national open-air museum. As opposed to other locations, the site of Ballenberg managed to convince the commission members of its suitability.

In 1978, the Swiss Open-Air Museum Ballenberg finally opened its doors and was presented to the public during a three-day celebration. After opening with 16 buildings, there were already 25 two years later and a total of 61 in 1985. Today, there are over 100 houses and other secondary buildings at Ballenberg. The basis for the academic concept of the Open-Air Museum Ballenberg was the work done by farmhouse researchers in Switzerland. It was fundamental in ensuring that there was a wide choice of the most important, typically characteristic forms of houses, farmsteads and settlements in this country.

The Swiss Open-Air Museum Ballenberg is not only an important cultural, research and tourist institution (although it does attract about 250,000 visitors from around the world every year), but with almost 200 workers at the museum during the season, from the middle of April until the end of October, the museum ranks as one of the most important employers in the area.

source http://www.ballenberg.ch/en/museum/organisation/history/

source http://www.myswitzerland.com/en-th/attractions-museums/open-air-museum-ballenberg.html

Ballenberg
Swiss Open-Air Museum
Museumsstrasse 131
CH-3858 Hofstetten bei Brienz
+41 33 952 10 30
info@ballenberg.ch