The Swiss Museum of Transport and Communication consists of the Museum of Transport, Switzerland's only IMAXÒ Theatre and large planetarium, the Hans Erni Museum, along with numerous other attractions. There is also a conference centre, and hungry guests and visitors are well catered for by a range of restaurants. The Swiss Museum of Transport is the country's most visited museum and a favourite destination for excursions. The Swiss Museum of Transport is operated by the Association Swiss Museum of Transport and Communication SMT, which owns the Museum's infrastructure. The collections (i.e. all archives and historical exhibits and artefacts) are the property of the Museum's foundation, Stiftung Verkehrshaus der Schweiz.
Aviation and Space Travel Hall
An exhibition hall to sweep you off your feet! Let us take you to exciting new heights, with more than 30 historic aircraft and flying machines and over 300 original artefacts, models, dioramas, experiments and simulators. Enter our Cosmorama to go above and beyond into outer space and into the history of space travel.
Rail transport
The definitive collection of Swiss rail transport, from the Spanisch-Brötli-Bahn to the new trans-Alpine railway (known as NEAT in German). Expanded to include the Gotthard tunnel show, featuring a ride on the service train to the tunnel's construction site in 1875; live accounts by a steam engine driver; historical documents; films; and interactive info stations. And let's not forget the impressive fleet of vintage locomotives and train cars in Rail Halls 1-3.
Navigation
On the water is where it all began. The oldest means of transport at the Swiss Museum of Transport is a dugout canoe from Lake Bienne dating back to the early stone age. Specimens of Swiss navigation's more recent history include the engine of the "Pilatus" paddle-steamer on Lake Lucerne, or the fully operational diesel engine of a 1929 vessel on the Rhine. Then there's the Nautirama for an award-winning close encounter with the turbulent events of the early days of steam navigation. Historic models, vintage boats, ships' engines, and the scale model of a lock complement the exhibition.
Cableways and Tourism
The only permanent cableway exhibition in the world will show you how to get from the valley up to the highest peaks in the twinkling of an eye – from manually operated funicular rails to the first ski lifts and the large, modern cable cars in use today. Would you like to stroll all over Switzerland? SWISSARENA, the largest aerial photograph of Switzerland, lets you do just that in little more than 200 m2! And the Tourism Flipper will take you on an even more unusual tour of Switzerland.
Road Transport
The most common form of transport that we encounter in our daily lives is road transport – by foot, on a horse or on two, four or more wheels. The diversity of road vehicles, their development, production, safety aspects and objects from the street environment all create a rich and varied picture of road traffic. Older innovations and today's old-timers boast spectacular forms or mystify observers with their unusual technical solutions. Popular mass-produced automobiles and exclusive, hand-made vehicles, bicycles and motorbikes, horse-drawn sleighs and coaches all demonstrate the diversity of transport on snow, gravel, cobblestones, asphalt and concrete. And here is the challenge! How fast is your braking reaction time? How do you perform in a crash test? And how brave are you in the saddle of a penny-farthing?
Scrap metal or cultural artefact?
In a world that is becoming ever more complex, museums can be valuable tools to help people orientate themselves. Museums offer special forms of communication; by displaying objects in context, the museum environment can explicate things and make them easier to understand. The collection of a museum is thus both a unique source of objects and also a reference point in the process of understanding. The authority of historical objects and documents is not always self-evident and it takes a lot of work by professional curators to unlock the information contained in artefacts and to make this knowledge accessible to visitors. Mass-produced goods are by definition lacking in uniqueness and are not artefacts in the archaeological sense of the word (i.e. "made by hand"). According to the traditional approach of cultural history, a vintage motorcar, for example, would not be considered a cultural artefact. However, if we look back at the 19th and 20th centuries then we have to agree that nothing has changed the way we live more than the key technologies involved in transport and mobility. Thus historical automobiles are also "historical witnesses" with equal claim to the status of cultural artefacts.
The Museum of Transport and Communication played an important role in this paradigm shift. For example, when Alfred Waldis (founder of the Museum) rescued the wreck of the Rigi steamship in 1958 it was not simply to be able to have something interesting to put on display in the courtyard of the new Museum. The crux of the matter was the rescue of the oldest intact side-paddle steamship in order to create a monument to the technology by placing the SS Rigi at the heart of the new museum complex.
The deployment of the steamer as a garden restaurant may jeopardise its historical authenticity from a contemporary perspective, but it also reflects the understanding of the object at the time as something functional and worth placing on display.
It has taken many years for the change to occur that has seen the understanding of technical objects as historical source material to become an accepted view. Slowly people have begun to see and appreciate the historical dimensions of technological objects. Today, the primary historical criteria are the original condition of the machine and the changes brought about in it by its use. Without the background of the object (plans, ownership, utilisation, etc.), little can be said about its historical significance.
The work of conservation is seen today as the maintenance of the historical item in the condition in which it was received by the Museum; it also involves the reversal of changes to the item that detract from its original idea or function. The numerous types of restoration projects are illustrated at the Museum by examples such as the early cogwheel locomotive "Gnom" from 1871, the motorbike "Motosacoche Jubilé" from 1931 and the "Adler" motorcar from 1913.
Transportation Archive
Photos, plans, posters, advertising material and books covering rail, air, space, road and water transportation and tourism bear witness to a history of rapid development over the last 150 years. The Transportation Archive is a collection that preserves and stores these documents, making them available for research purposes.
The focus of the Archive's collection is "Transport and mobility in Switzerland". In addition to the technical development of vehicles and their operation, the collection also reflects the social and cultural impact of mobility.
Access to the Archive collection
Access to the Archive collection requires an appointment made in advance. The Transportation Archive library is open to the general public three times a week. During these hours an appointment is not required.
