6 Best Sights in Fribourg and Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Located at water's edge, this interactive archaeological museum is the largest in Switzerland. In the nearby community of Hauterive, it displays artifacts found in and around Lac de Neuchâtel and explains how they were recovered. The lifestyles of Bronze Age lake dwellers are skillfully depicted, with pride of place going to a sculpted standing stone that resembles a man, from Bevaix, a village southwest of Neuchâtel. Inside the museum, see the remains of a 60-foot-long Gallo-Roman barge; outside in the park, its reconstruction is moored near a full-scale wooden Bronze Age house on stilts. There is a pamphlet in English, and for SF5 you can rent an hour-long audio guide in English. There is a free shuttle-boat service to Hauterive from the port in Neuchâtel that runs Friday–Sunday in April and May and Tuesday–Sunday from June to September.

Although Yverdon has a lot of history, it also has a special place in its heart for the future, thanks to this fanciful "museum of science fiction, utopia, and extraordinary journeys." Although mainly a research center and library for scholars, the House of Elsewhere mounts fascinating exhibitions for the general public, including such recent shows as the ones devoted to the popular Return to Dinotopia books and H.P. Lovecraft.

Neuchâtel is part of the Three Lakes wine region, the smallest of Switzerland's six wine-growing areas. The famous Pinot Noir rosé wine, Oeil de Perdrix, originated in Neuchâtel, and the canton produces many other excellent wines, including traditional-method sparkling wine made by the Mauler winery in an old Benedictine monastery in Val-de-Travers. Amid the vineyards that fan out to the west of Neuchâtel city and slope gently down to the lake sits Château Boudry, which houses the Musée Cantonale de la Vigne et du Vin (Cantonal Museum of Vine and Wine).

For something completely different, visit the quirky Musée des Grenouilles. Here are displays of 108 embalmed frogs posed like people in scenes of daily life from the 19th century. Other exhibits include an authentic 17th-century kitchen, military artifacts, and household objects dredged from Lac de Neuchâtel.

Examples of almost every sewing machine ever built (more than 250) are on exhibit here. There's also a collection of contraptions created to ease the life of handworkers and housewives before the age of electricity, including useful household firsts such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines. A side room is packed with curiosities from bygone days, such as chestnut-hulling boots. Second-generation owner and half-American Marc Wassmer charms with anecdotes and history—ask the accomplished bass to sing a few bars—he alone is worth the visit.

Housed in an artfully converted chapel, this museum run by the Alain Bordier Foundation boasts an important collection of some 300 Buddhist sculptures, paintings, and ritual objects, mainly Tibetan or otherwise Himalayan, and also some from northern India and Myanmar.