Most towns this size have a local-history museum. Yverdon has a museum of the future, or rather, of every future humans have ever imagined. Maison d’Ailleurs (“House of Elsewhere”) is devoted to science fiction, utopia and voyages extraordinaires, and there are only a handful of institutions like it on the planet. That it sits in a quiet Swiss lake town is exactly the kind of pleasant surprise that makes it worth your afternoon.
How it began
The museum exists because of one obsessive collector. In 1976 the French writer Pierre Versins gave the city the science-fiction library he had spent more than twenty years assembling, the same trove behind his landmark Encyclopédie de l’utopie, des voyages extraordinaires et de la science-fiction. What began as his collection is now one of the largest of its kind anywhere: a documentation centre of over 120,000 items — books, film posters, comics, toys, records and original art — with archive pieces reaching back to the 16th century.
What’s inside
Rather than show it all at once, the museum builds changing exhibitions around a single theme, so there is always something new; see ailleurs.ch for what is on now. Its permanent jewel is the Espace Jules Verne, a wing opened in 2008 across a footbridge, holding one of the world’s most important Jules Verne collections and a walk through the roots of science fiction. It is clever without being cold: children are pulled in by the rockets and ray-guns, and adults stay for the ideas underneath.
The building
The setting has its own twist. Since 1991 the museum has occupied Yverdon’s former prisons, just off Place Pestalozzi: imagined futures, laid out in the old cells.
Practical notes
- Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11:00–18:00 (and public holidays); closed 25 December and 1 January. Admission prices aren’t listed online, so check ailleurs.ch or buy on arrival. Allow an hour to ninety minutes.
- Where: Place Pestalozzi 14, in the old town, a few minutes from the station and next to the Château d’Yverdon.
Combine it
Maison d’Ailleurs, the Château d’Yverdon and the old-town cafés are all within a minute of one another on Place Pestalozzi, the natural hub for a morning on foot before an afternoon at the Centre Thermal. Speculative futures first, then warm water.
