4 Best Sights in Gruyères, Fribourg and Neuchâtel

Crowning the storybook village of Gruyères is the town's famed château. Between 1080 and 1554, 19 counts held political power over this region, and they built and expanded this medieval castle. Little is known about them except for the last one, Michel. A lover of luxury and big spending, he expanded the estates and then fled his creditors in 1555. In 1849, a wealthy Geneva family bought the castle and encouraged painter friends to decorate a room now known as Corot's Room, because it features four of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's landscapes. Also worth seeing is the Knights' Room with its impressive 19th-century fresco cycle depicting local legends, and the aptly named Fantastic Art Room, hung with contemporary work. An 18-minute multimedia show called Gruyères, which brings to life the history of the castle in animated form (available in eight languages), shown daily in the old caretaker's lodge, is worth your time.

This museum houses the world's largest collection of paintings, sculpture, furniture, and film designs by the enormously talented but equally tormented H.R. Giger. The Swiss surrealist, who died in 2014, won an Academy Award for his set design for the horror film Alien; he was not likely to win any prizes for his cheerful, healthy outlook on life (or women). That said, a few of his sculpture-furniture pieces are very good. Most people get enough of an idea about the artist just by sitting in the Giger Bar, opposite the museum. Here you can admire ceiling buttresses that look like elongated backbones with ribs, and his ingenious trademark chairs: yet more spines and ribs, with pelvises for headrests.

Before going up to town, you can visit the very touristy Maison du Gruyère, a demonstration fromagerie (cheese dairy) where the famous cheese is produced with fully modernized equipment. Demonstrations are given two to four times a day, depending on the season. There's also a shop and a restaurant that sells every variation on a cheese dish you ever dreamed of (including three-course "Gruyère cheese menus").

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.