Cobblestoned Streets Of Gruyères

Gruyères is a village that looks as if it were built for a postcard, and the reason lies in its layout. The upper town sits on a ridge, with a single main street, wide in the middle, running along the top of the ridge from one gate to the castle at the other end. The street is lined with tall stone houses with steep roofs and painted shutters, many dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and it is paved with cobbles that slope gently toward the middle. Cars are kept out of the upper town, so you walk through a village that has kept its medieval plan almost intact. It is a place where one walk, from end to end, takes only ten minutes, but where it is easy to spend several hours.

Gruyères was founded in the Middle Ages by the counts of Gruyère, whose castle dominates the ridge, and the village grew up along the road in the shelter of their walls. The main street was a market place and a route for traders and farmers, and the buildings that line it were homes and workshops of merchants and craftsmen, with a few inns for those on the road. After the fall of the counts in the sixteenth century, the village passed to the canton of Fribourg and remained a small agricultural centre, where cheese was the main business. Today there are only a few dozen inhabitants in the walled upper town, though more live in the surrounding commune, and the old houses are a mix of homes, shops, restaurants and small museums.

The pleasure of walking here is largely in the details: carved stone fountains, wooden balconies with geraniums in summer, coats of arms above doors, iron signs hanging over the street and, at the end, the view over the pastures to the mountains. Along the street are restaurants serving local specialities. The best known is cheese fondue, made with local cheeses, and raclette, but the village also has a speciality of its own in the form of meringues eaten with thick local double cream, a dessert that is practically obligatory. Shops sell cheese, chocolate, wooden carvings and cowbells, and some offer free tastings of the cheeses, which are made in the valley below.

Two unusual museums add variety. One is dedicated to the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, creator of the creature in the film Alien, and it occupies a medieval house at the entrance to the village, where dark, fantastical art contrasts with the pastoral surroundings. The other is the castle itself, with its furnished rooms and garden. Nearby, the cheese dairy and the chocolate factory at Broc make the village the centre of a tour of local food.

Because Gruyères is popular, the street can be crowded in the middle of the day, especially in summer and when coach tours arrive, so early morning and evening are the best times to enjoy the village at a quiet pace. Wear comfortable shoes, as the cobbles are uneven, and note that the village is not well suited to wheelchairs and pushchairs, although a flat route is possible along the main street. Parking is outside the village, and the railway station is a short walk below. A visit suits couples, families and photographers, and a few hours is enough for the street, a meal and one museum.