Museums & exhibition rooms

The Maison du Lac displays the whole Lake Aiguebelette in a vibrant and cosy ambience. The show area allows you to dive into a unique and protected sphere where each of the seasons reveal their secrets. In your interactive visit, you will be discovering the uniqueness of our environment and the people that lived in, protected, made history in it and worked on its future.

The Lac et Nature museum is a didactic facility that introduces the visitors to the fragile balance of the lake. The museum was built step by step by FAPLA (Fédération des Associations de Protection du Lac d'Aiguebelette) and offers the best opportunity to convey the natural, biological and cultural heritage of Lake Aiguebelette.

The Stone Age village Pestenacker demonstrates vivid history you can discover and participate in. Modelled after a prehistoric settlement discovered in 1934, the Stone Age village is being extended and further professionalised. A byre-dwelling from the New Stone Age, reconstructed in its original size, is waiting for your visit. In the Stone Age garden, it is time for a discovery tour of cereal crops and herbs. The Stone Age bee houses show how our ancestors were harvesting honey 5500 years ago and regularly baked bread in the Stone Age clay oven. In the visitor's pavilion, you can discover tools, weapons, ceramics and fabrics as in the New Stone Age.

The State Archaeological Collection, founded in 1885, is the archaeological museum of the Free State of Bavaria. In addition to many other central objects from 100,000 years of human history, finds from the three World Heritage Sites of Rose Island, Pestenacker and Unfriedshausen are kept and exhibited here.

The museum carries the most important archaeological finds of the Venetians, who lived in this region during the 1st millennium BC. The Roman section shows the transformation of the city of Ateste between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD. Smaller but important parts of the exhibition are dedicated to the prehistory of the Euganean Hills – especially the pile-dwelling site of Laghetto della Costa di Arquà – and the post-antique period.

The archaeological collection comprises more than 100,000 objects from all Swiss regions. Important ensembles are the pile-dwelling finds from the Seeland Region of Victor Gross's Collection and those from Lake Zurich by Ferdinand Keller. An aesthetic presentation shows the fascinating world of pile-dwelling finds. On display are, for example, a Neolithic door, one of the oldest wheels in Europe and numerous objects made of leather or wood.

Pile-dwelling research began in 1854 with the finds in Meilen. In its permanent exhibition, the Meilen Local Museum shows archaeological discoveries from various lakeside settlements in the municipality. The exhibition covers topics such as construction, nutrition, everyday objects, movement, agriculture, vegetation and wildlife.

The museum documents housing and trade in the 18th and 19th centuries, home working and industrialisation, but also houses a rich prehistoric collection, including pile-dwelling finds from the northern shore of Lake Pfäffikon.