La Maison du Gruyères is a cheese dairy in western Switzerland where they make Gruyère, the most popular cheese in Switzerland (as opposed to Emmental, which is the most popular Swiss cheese outside Switzerland).
At their small interactive museum, you learn about cheese making and this important industry in Switzerland, which produces over 200,000 tons of cheese a year.
The museum has an informative audio tour (in English and several other languages) and a few fun activities to keep kids interested. In the mornings, you can watch cheese being made on the live factory floor.
We suggest combining the Gruyères dairy with a visit to the nearby Cailler Chocolate Factory and Gruyeres village and castle.
| Location: | Western Switzerland, near Montreux |
| Address: | Place de la Gare 3, 1663 Pringy-Gruyères |
| Car: | from Montreux 30 mins, Bern 50 mins, Geneva 1h25, Zurich 2h |
| Train: | Gruyères train station, 1 min walk from station from Montreux 1h10, Bern 1h20, Geneva 2h, Zürich 2hr30 |
| Open: | year round, daily 9:00 to 18:00 |
| Price (2024): | Adult CHF 7 |
| More info: | www.lamaisondugruyere.ch |
How to get there
This cheese factory is located in Gruyères in western Switzerland. It’s a good day trip from Montreux, Lausanne, Bern or Geneva.
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By car: The address is Place de la Gare 3, 1663 Pringy-Gruyères. There is parking at the dairy.
By public transport: Take a train to the Gruyères station. The dairy is a 1 minute walk from the station.
Planning your day
Tickets
Entrance to the museum and factory observation costs CHF 7/adult, CHF 12/family (2 adults + children under 12).
If you also plan to visit the nearby Gruyères castle, you can purchase a combined ticket that includes both. No advance booking online.
Tip: The Gruyères cheese factory is one of four dairies on the Swiss Cheese Passport. If you visit all four withing two years, you get a special prize.
Opening times
The La Maison du Gruyère museum is open year round, daily from 9:00 – 18:00.
Live cheesemaking is doing in the mornings, generally from 9:00 – 12:30. See the actual cheese making schedule on their website. Below is a sample from 2024.
Tip: Your tour starts with the museum. But I suggest going straight to the factory floor viewing area to see where they are in the cheese making process. When there’s not much action, go back to the audio tour. This way you don’t accidently miss the exciting cheese action.
Photo story of museum
Note: These photos are from our visit in 2011. Some of the exhibits may have changed since then.
Cheese museum
The cheese exhibit is small but informative. Everyone gets an audio guide, so you can listen to a cow tell you all about cheese making. My boys had fun typing in random numbers so they could listen to the cow in different languages like Japanese.
You walk along a short informational board that tells you all about cows and cheese. Most descriptions are in French, German, and English.
I liked this part that lets you smell all the things that cows eat and guess what they are.
I thought the factoids were fascinating. My kids, not so much.
Live cheese making
Then you enter the gallery where you can see the cheese being made on the factory floor. I liked that the glass windows went all the way to the floor so the little kids could easily see.
There are a couple videos running on loops, showing the whole cheese making process in case you don’t want to wait around. If you visit in the morning, you can see various stages of cheese making. the cheese making schedule. I think the most interesting part is “removing the cheese and filling it into the molds.”
We kept getting excited as the workers would come in and out of the room, checking the milk temperature, spraying water around, fussing with equipment, etc.
After about 30 minutes, he finally poured the curds and whey into cheese molds and prepared them for pressing.
Eventually the cheese ends up in the cheese caves where it ages.
Restaurant
I usually don’t like to eat at the themed restaurant attached to an attraction. But for convenience, we opted to eat at the cheese factory and the food was better than expected. I had a rösti with gruyere cheese and bacon, very tasty.
Families will appreciate the kids menu, high chairs and a small play corner.
There is also a playground outside the restaurant, surrounding by picnic tables.
La Maison du Gruyères is a modern cheese factory but has nods to the traditional methods like this mural.
