The 7 best things to do in Gruyères, Switzerland

A medieval town on a hill surrounded by grazing pastures, Gruyères is a must-see place in Switzerland. This enchanting town boasts more than 800 years of history, welcoming travelers from around the world to walk its cobbled streets, visit its castle and sample fondue in the cheese-making capital of Switzerland. So that you don’t miss out on any interesting experiences, here are the 7 best things to do in Gruyères.

Visit La Maison Cailler chocolate factory

You can’t visit Switzerland without trying some delicious Swiss chocolate. Just outside Gruyères, in the town of Broc, you’ll find Maison Cailler, a beautiful estate that operates as a chocolate factory. The oldest chocolate manufacturer in Switzerland, Cailler was founded in 1819 and makes its quality chocolate from Gruyere milk and West African cocoa. An essential stop for chocolate lovers, the factory offers an interactive tour that takes you through the history of chocolate and how it became a Swiss delicacy.

You’ll learn about Aztec cocoa ceremonies and how chocolate was introduced to Europe by the Spanish conquistadores. Enticed by the scent of chocolate, you can take an audiovisual guided tour of the factory and learn about the craft of chocolate making.

You can walk through the factory to see chocolatiers in action and taste some of the raw ingredients used in making chocolate. You can also take a workshop where you’ll learn to create a chocolate bar with your favourite ingredients. At the end of the tour there is a tasting room where you can eat unlimited amounts of chocolate and finally a factory shop where you can buy chocolate products.

To get to Maison Cailler from Geneva, take the Golden Panoramic Express train tour. The scenic rail journey will take you through the lakeside towns of Vevey and Montreux and on to a full tour of Maison Cailler in Broc. The tour will also take you to a Swiss chalet where you can make your own fondue and then on to Gruyères to stroll its medieval lanes.

See cheese-making at La Maison du Gruyère

Cheese production in Gruyères dates back to the 12th century. Watch master cheesemakers at work at La Maison du Gruyère, a diary plant that produces Gruyère, a nutty, slow-maturing cheese. It is the most consumed cheese in Switzerland. The smooth-melting cheese is used in many Swiss dishes like raclette and fondue. Gruyère is also a great table cheese and the best cheese to use in French onion soup.

La Maison du Gruyère is a cheese manufacturing museum. Through audio tapes and graphic displays you’ll learn about the ancestral traditions of cheesemaking in the region and the steps involved in making the product. From behind a glass wall on the viewing platform, you can watch the cheese being made in enormous copper vats. You can view the cellar where the huge round slabs of Gruyère are stored and matured. You’ll also get to taste some of the world renowned cheese. 

Walk around Gruyères village

One of the best reasons to visit Gruyères is to walk its medieval cobbled streets. The visual appeal of the village and its pastel-colored houses attracts many day trippers. Dating back 800 years, there’s quite a bit of history and architecture to see.  

View the historic cobbled squares, stone fountains and quaint cafes. Gaze at the window shutters lined with geraniums as you amble around the village. You can take a guided walking tour to view some of Gruyères’ most interesting buildings and locations while learning more about the village’s history. These tours usually last around two hours and will take you through many of Gruyères’ highlights.

Enjoy a cheese fondue meal

You can get creative with a class at the Gruyères Fondue Academy and learn how to prepare your own fondue from a teacher with a master’s degree in cheese and fondue. You can also eat a traditional Swiss fondue at a local restaurant.

Order an assiette Valasianne on the side, which is a plate of pickles, pearl onions and dried meats. With the long-stemmed forks dip the crusty bread into the pot of gooey, melted cheese and enjoy this culinary specialty. For a great desert order meringues served with Gruyère double cream.     

Visit Gruyères Castle

Visit one of the most famous castles in Switzerland, Gruyères Castle, and learn about the architecture, history and culture of the region. The turreted castle was built by the Counts of Gruyères in the 13th century and looks out over the Alpine foothills.     

Learn about the castle history and medieval past of Gruyères along the way. Check out the old artifacts that date back to the early years of Gruyères—the stained glass windows still intact from the Middle Ages, the historical weapons, and the three capes of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a Catholic order of chivalry. Also take a look at the troubadour decorations of the Knight’s Room. 

Before you leave the castle, stroll through the beautiful French garden of manicured hedges and flowerbeds, and take in the panoramic views. A visit to the castle is one of the best things to do in Gruyères.      

Visit the HR Giger Museum

HR Giger was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed surrealist art and being the concept artist for the film Alien. Located in a medieval chateau, the HR Giger Museum contains the world’s largest collection of his works. Here you can see the sculptures, paintings and furniture created by Giger. View the monochromatic paintings, the biomechanical art where human bodies meld with machinery.  

By the wall of the museum stands a silver metal statue of a biomechanoid woman. In front of the museum is the Birth Machine sculpture, an aluminum cast of a pistol loaded with bullet babies in a 9mm Luger casing. The sculpture represents the greatest threat to the planet—overpopulation.          

Giger suffered from night terrors, so he kept a sketch pad near his bed to draw the dark creatures and disturbing visions. He spent time reworking photos he took of garbage trucks to make them look mechanically erotic. He created airbrushed images of skeletal aliens entangled with industrial machinery. His curtains were always closed. He wore mostly black and worked only at night.  

Giger took a liking to Gruyères after having an exhibition there in the 1990s and bought a chateau in the town. He turned it into a museum that permanently displays his artwork, a place for his otherworldly creations to inhabit. His art has a disturbing intensity. It is repelling and fascinating at the same time, a nightmarish vision of humanoids in a dystopian world. The museum contains a large collection of his airbrushed paintings, film memorabilia and metal sculptures. 

His artwork has influenced film, video games, fetish art and tattoo culture, and has appeared on music albums by Danzig and the Dead Kennedys. Many of his paintings are quite unsettling with occult imagery of pentagrams and Baphomet, the goat-headed creature.

When Ridley Scott came across a Giger print called Necronom IV  he found the alien he was looking for. He hired Giger to create the xenomorph for his movie Alien, based on the artwork. Besides the creature’s look, Giger also worked on the characters, scenery and props, including the set design for the spacecraft. As the concept artist, he created the four-stage life cycle of the creature—from the alien eggs to the fetus bursting out of John Hurt’s stomach to the eyeless, insectoid killer that stalks the crewmembers of the space ship. He won an Oscar for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his work on the movie. 

Even if you’re not familiar with the artist or the Alien films, the museum is still a must-see. You can even pose for photos with the statues outside the museum.

Have a drink at the HR Giger Bar

Designed by the artist himself, the interior displays the grey, biomechanical style of an alien’s lair. Walk through the alcove entrance into the cavernous bar. The vaulted ceiling of two arched vertebrae makes you feel like you’re inside a fossilized prehistoric creature. 

Sip an Alien Coffee while seated at the bar in a high-backed Harkonnen Chair, named after the villain in the novel Dune. These chairs, made to look like human skeletons, were designed by Giger for an unproduced film version of the book. The chairs have spinal cord backs and pelvis bones for headrests. The bar has bone-colored stonework and bizarre hieroglyphs engraved on the floor plates. Sit in an alcove and drink a Giger Absinthe to increase your sensory awareness and begin to notice the predatory attention of the alien.