Globe Countries Cities Dispatches About Get the App
Gruyères, Switzerland
Switzerland

Things to do in Gruyères

Why you should go

Ninety seconds on Gruyères

A single cobbled street on a hill with a castle at the top and no cars, in the green pre-alpine country of the Fribourg canton. The cheese that carries the name is made in the valley below and has been since the twelfth century. The castle holds an unlikely second tenant. H. R. Giger, who designed the creature in Alien, bought a building in the village and put his museum in it, which sits about a hundred metres from the cheese dairy.

3 places on record

Things to do

3
  1. Chateau de Gruyeres

    Chateau de Gruyeres

    Castle · 1.5 hr

    A castle of the thirteenth century held by nineteen counts until 1554, with a Savoyard hall, a nineteenth-century decorative scheme by the Bovy circle and a garden laid out on the ramparts looking at the Moleson.

  2. Moleson

    Viewpoint · 3 hr

    The pyramid above the village at 2,002 metres, reached by funicular and cable car from Moleson-sur-Gruyeres, looking over the whole Fribourg pre-alps to the Bernese chain and on a clear day to Mont Blanc.

  3. Musee HR Giger

    Gallery · 1.5 hr

    The Swiss artist's own museum in the Chateau St. Germain, holding the airbrush work, the sculpture and the Oscar he won for Alien in 1980. The bar across the lane is fitted out as a vertebral cavern and is worth the detour on its own.

Basemap Meridian · data © OpenStreetMap
All of Switzerland

Last updated

Meridian Dispatch for iPhone

Plan the trip.
Keep the journal.

Every other travel app asks you to start logging. Meridian Dispatch opens with years of your travel already written, from the photographs you already took.

Download on the App Store