The Biedermann House, a 1518 farmhouse that moved four times

This is the Liechtenstein museum the fewest people see, and not because it doesn’t deserve visitors. It opens on very few afternoons a year and sits in the country’s smallest municipality, well away from the coach routes. If the date works for you, it ranks, for me, among the most genuine sights in the country.

A house from 1518 that came apart

The Biedermann House was built of logs in 1518, as houses then were across much of the Alps. What makes it extraordinary is its history. Under the law of the day, a house like this didn’t belong to whoever owned the land but to the farmer who leased it, as if it were furniture. When he took on a new lease, he dismantled it piece by piece and rebuilt it on the new plot.

So it moved in 1687 and in 1793-94, and for the last time in 1992-93, beam by beam, to stop it being demolished. It has been a listed building since 1993. The LandesMuseum explains that this very method, designed for moving house, is why the type almost vanished, and that this is one of the few survivors anywhere in the Alps.

Below is a stone cellar, and above it the living block. There was a kitchen open right up to the roof, a parlour and a smaller side room, and on the second floor two bedrooms. The original shallow roof was replaced in 1793-94 with a steeper one.

What’s inside?

The interior is arranged as a Liechtenstein family lived around 1900. It isn’t a palace or a wealthy home, and that’s exactly what I like. Until the mid-20th century many people here depended on seasonal work abroad or emigrated altogether, and the big economic change only came after 1945. This house shows you what came before.

The museum also traces the first signs of change. In the later 19th century, taming the Rhine cut flood damage and freed more fertile land for farming, and from 1860 factories began to open, giving many families a steady wage for the first time. Grasping that here, in a log house, works far better for me than reading it on a panel on the Städtle.

The name comes from the Biedermann family, the last private owners, who lived in it for more than 150 years. The Historisches Lexikon specifies that the same branch of the family lived there from 1814 to 1964. Since 1994 it has been the rural life museum of the LandesMuseum, which also runs the Liechtenstein National Museum in Vaduz.

Opening times, and the catch

Here’s the snag. The house only takes visitors between April and October, and only on two Sundays a month, the first and the last, in the afternoon from 14:00 to 17:00. Entry is free. In 2026 there are two afternoons left, 4 and 25 October, and after that it stays shut until April 2027.

Some Sundays bring something extra. On 27 September 2026, for example, the museum announced a «RebelSunntig», a Sunday devoted to Ribel, the cornmeal dish that was once the country’s staple food. Check the LandesMuseum website before you go in case there’s something similar on.

If you’re travelling as a group and no Sunday fits, ask the LandesMuseum, which runs the house from Vaduz and takes group enquiries for its four venues through the contact details on its website. I haven’t seen visits advertised outside those afternoons, so I can’t promise anything.

How do you get there, and what else is in Schellenberg?

The house is at Dorf 62, on the Schellenberg hill in the Unterland. LIEmobil routes 32 and 33 reach the municipality from Eschen and Mauren. On foot, stage 5 of the Liechtenstein Trail, from Ruggell to Schaanwald, passes the museum after the Ruggeller Riet and the ruins, and I’d walk it on an opening Sunday to stop here. It’s all on my page about stage 5 of the Liechtenstein Trail.

Nearby are the ruins of the Schellenberg castles, upper and lower, open at any time and the other good reason to come up. My plan would be ruins in the morning, lunch in the village and the house at 14:00. The rest of the municipality is covered in my guide to Schellenberg.

For how this one sits alongside the country’s other collections, read the Liechtenstein museums overview.