Museum of Music Automatons - the sounding museum

The world-famous "sounding collection" from two centuries invites you to a musical-nostalgic tour. Discover the history of music automatons, amazing technical details and many nostalgic melodies - played live!

The Museum of Music Automatons Seewen SO has been delighting a steadily growing fan base for years. It is located around 20 km south of Basel and is one of the most popular attractions in north-western Switzerland.

The "sounding museum" owes its existence to the passionate collecting activities of Dr. h.c. Heinrich Weiss, who for decades lovingly and meticulously assembled a comprehensive collection of Swiss music boxes and record boxes, music automatons, music clocks, figurine automatons, phonographs and gramophones into what is now a world-famous collection. In 1979, he transferred this collection to a museum and made it accessible to the public. And in 1990, he donated his entire collection, the museum building and the grounds to the Swiss Confederation. Since then, the Museum of Music Automatons Seewen SO has been a federal museum. Organizationally, it now belongs to the Federal Office of Culture (FOC).

The Museum of Music Automatons is located in the middle of the scenic Jura landscape in the Schwarzbubenland region of Solothurn at around 610 meters above sea level. It is a very special destination for hikes or excursions at any time of year. The modern, spacious building also includes a restaurant with a sun terrace and a museum store. The parking spaces for cars and buses and the post bus stop "Seewen SO, Musikautomaten" are right next door. Everything is wheelchair-accessible throughout.

The one-hour guided tour of the permanent exhibition is an important part of a visit to the museum of sound. The most diverse facets of the world of mechanical musical instruments are illuminated, and very different music automatons are explained and demonstrated - live. Let yourself be whisked away musically to a world that has disappeared. Those interested will learn how perfect piano music was brought into the upper middle-class salon around 1910 - played by the best pianists of the time and stored on music rolls for mechanical instruments. Or you can listen to a luxury music box, such as those produced in large numbers in Switzerland in the late 19th century as an export hit. Listen to waltzes and tangos played by large orchestras from Germany, Belgium or the Czech Republic, whose music our grandparents and great-grandparents got to know. Or discover the inner workings of the music automatons, which were built with infinite patience, precision and great dexterity.

Another showpiece is the mighty, self-playing Welte Philharmonic organ, which was built for the ocean liner Britannic - sister ship of the Titanic. On the Britannic organ, around 1500 Welte music rolls with interpretations from the first decades of the 20th century can be played. There are only around five Welte Philharmonic organs of this type still in operation and the museum's roll collection is the world's leading collection.

A detour to the museum store with its wide range of musical souvenirs, wonderful music boxes, exhibition brochures, specialist books, postcards and CDs and the restaurant with its sun terrace round off a visit to the museum.

The sounding museum is a wonderful excursion destination for young and old, whatever the weather!


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.