Museums and art galleries

The museum (Das Historische Museum) focusses on the history of the town and the industrial and railway and road development of the canton Solothurn in the nineteenth and twentienth centuries. The archaeological museum is housed in the same building.

The Foundation focuses on German and Swiss Romanticism of the first half of the nineteenth century and collects, studies and discusses art from this period.  

The museum (Das Archäologische Museum) presents finds of the pre- and early history of the city and the region.

The development of the nature of the region can be seen in the museum.  

The most beautiful set of Roman mosaics in the north of the Alps are exhibited in Orbe-Boscéaz . These vestiges of a Roman villa represent figurative and geometrical scenes. Discovered in the middle of the 19th century, these mosaics paved eight of the 100 rooms in a huge and luxurious Gallo-Roman villa that was built towards … Read more » “Roman Mosaics Orbe”

The small museum (Patrimoine au fil de l’eau) is located in a restored historical building and complex of water mills from the from the 15th century.  The museum presents exhibitions that allow a better understanding of the site and of its  development particularly in relation with the river Orbe.

The 13th century castle is open to the public and shows the apartments, rooms, furniture, paintings, crockery, library and other interior.  

The abbey museum (Musée de l’Abbatiale de Payerne)  is housed in the eleventh century abbey. Mural paintings, Romanesque architecture, numerous objects, capitals, windows, sculpture and a model of the abbey can be seen. The museum also shows paintings from the seventeenth and eigtheenth centuries.  

The museum is dedicated to the sculptor Mario Bernasconi (1899-1963) and the painter Irma Bernasconi).

The museum gives an insight into the history of the bath and bathing from its origins to the present day and is a place of culture with concerts and exhibitions.