World Heritage Days 2025: La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle

Saturday and Sunday, 14-15 June 2025

📍 La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle
🕘 all day

The two towns of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle invite you to an exciting weekend dedicated to the UNESCO World Heritage property. Visitors can discover the unique architecture of the two towns, which is closely linked to the history of watchmaking.
 

📌 Guided tours of the two cities
📌 Guided tours for children
📌 Visits to emblematic places
📌 New ‘Espace de l'urbanisme horloger’ visitor centre 
📌 Special exhibition ‘UNESCO World Heritage in Switzerland’. 

Guided tours (in French)

✨La Chaux-de-Fonds - Wake up and visit!
🕐 Saturday, 06:00-07:30
🚶‍♂️ Starting point: Place Espacité
Discover the watchmaking urbanism of La Chaux-de-Fonds at dawn with a guided tour lasting an hour and a half, to fully appreciate the role of light in the construction of the city. The visit ends with coffee and a croissant in a former watchmaking workshop. Reservation required: www.neuchateltourisme.ch/jpm2025

✨ La Chaux-de-Fonds – Le Locle: visita tra le città
🕐 Saturday and Sunday, 09:15-12:15 et 14:15-17:15 
🚶‍♂️ Starting point: Esplanade de la Gare du Locle
The World Heritage Days inaugurate a new format for visits to the watchmaking cityscape site, with tours of the two cities in the mountains of Neuchâtel, first in Le Locle and then in La Chaux-de-Fonds. It is a great opportunity to discover the similarities and differences between the two towns. Reservation required: www.neuchateltourisme.ch/jpm2025

⚠️ A minibus included in the tour will take you from Le Locle to La Chaux-de-Fonds, but will not return to the starting point of the tour. Public transport tickets are the responsibility of the participants.

✨La Chaux-de-Fonds - Biography of a street
🕐 Saturday, 10h00-11h30 and Sunday, 14:00-15:30
🚶‍♂️ Starting point: Place des Brigades-Internationales
A visit in a different format, from east to west, to see how the development of the watchmaking industry has been reflected in the urban development of La Chaux-de-Fonds over the decades. Guided tour with Sylvie Pipoz, heritage manager of the city of La Chaux-de-Fonds. No reservation is necessary.

✨La Chaux-de-Fonds – Watchmaking Town Planning
🕐 Saturday, 10:00-12:00 and Sunday, 14:00-16:00
🚶‍♂️ Starting point: Espace de l'urbanisme horloger (Rue Jaquet-Droz 23)
A walking tour to discover the watchmaking metropolis and its characteristic orthogonal layout and architecture: from the small workshops in the old town to the large factories and villas in the western part of the city. Reservation not required.

✨Le Locle – History and urban planning
🕐 Sunday, 14:00-16:00
🚶‍♂️ Starting point: Parvis de l'Hôtel de Ville
A walk through the ‘Mère Commune’ of the Neuchâtel mountains, from Rue du Crêt-Vaillant, the city's oldest quarter, to the places where some of the best watchmakers grew up and the distinctive architecture of their production plants. Reservations are not necessary.

✨The children's chessboard (from 8 years old)
🕐 Saturday, 14:00-15:00 and Sunday, 11:00-12:00
🚶‍♂️ Starting point: Espace de l'urbanisme horloger (Rue Jaquet-Droz 23)
This new guided tour for children is an opportunity to discover their city from a different point of view. Guided by a heritage specialist, they will follow in the footsteps of watchmaking town planning by observing and drawing its features. Reservation required: www.neuchateltourisme.ch/jpm2025

✨The forgotten Atelier
🕐 Saturday, 14:00-14:30 / 15:00-15:30 and Sunday, 10:00-10:30 / 11:00-11:30
📌 Rue du Progrès 68, La Chaux-de-Fonds
A rare testimony to watchmaking mechanics, the forgotten Atelier was rediscovered some ten years ago, on the ground floor of an ordinary building in the watchmaking urban fabric of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Its current state is such that one would think it was no longer in use just yesterday. The guided tour is an invitation to step back in time and experience the history and heritage of watchmaking at first hand. Reservation compulsory: www.neuchateltourisme.ch/jpm2025

Open doors / exhibitions

✨Espace de l'urbanisme horloger
🕐 Saturday and Sunday, 10:00-16:30
📌 Rue Jaquet-Droz 23, La Chaux-de-Fonds
The ‘Espace de l'urbanisme horloger’ is the place to find information on the World Heritage Site and this spring it reopened its doors to the public, completely renovated. The World Heritage Days are an opportunity to rediscover this exhibition and its new film, which offer a quick overview of what makes the towns of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds so unique.

✨Salon Bleu
🕐 Saturday and Sunday, 09:00-12:00 | Guided tours at 09:30 – 10:30 – 11:30 (20')
📌 Rue du Doubs 32, La Chaux-de-Fonds
The Salon Bleu is the heart of a remarkable watchmaking architectural complex. It used to belong to and form an integral part of the flat of the owner of the watch case company Charles - Rodolphe Spillmann. Today it is owned by the city and borders one of the company's former workshops. It is a fine example of the link between housing and production sites, typical of watchmaking town planning. Reservations are required for guided tours:  www.neuchateltourisme.ch/jpm2025

✨Town Hall in Le Locle   
🕐 Saturday, 09:00-11:30 and 13:30-16:00 | Guided tours on Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 (45')
📌 Avenue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville 1, Le Locle
The Town Hall in Le Locle is the seat of the municipal authorities. This Heimatstil-inspired building was built between 1913 and 1917. Its two façades are decorated with frescoes painted in 1922 by Vaud artist Ernest Biéler. Take advantage of World Heritage Days to discover this building thanks to the brochure available at the tourist information point or the guided tours that will take you through some of the building's most emblematic rooms. Reservations are required for guided tours: www.neuchateltourisme.ch/jpm2025

✨Exhibition "World Heritage Experience Switzerland"
📌 Rue Traversière, La Chaux-de-Fonds

Switzerland has 13 properties on the World Heritage List. WHES, the umbrella organisation fo the World Heritage properties in Switzerland, is staging its exhibition and invites you to travel through the country, from the Bellinzona Fortress to the terraced vineyards of Lavaux, via the Rhaetian railways and the landscapes of the Albula-Bernina or prehistoric pile-dwelling sites.

Publications

Designed and published by the Foundation to enhance the inscribed site, the short guides are appreciated by both occasional visitors and local history enthusiasts. They provide an overview of important themes relating to the heritage of the towns of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds. The 2025 edition will be dedicated to the fundamentals of watchmaking town planning. All editions of the small guides are on sale at the Espace de l'urbanisme horloger and Tourisme neuchâtelois (Espacité 1) for CHF 3 and at the tourist information point at Le Locle town hall.

More information and registrations

www.neuchateltourisme.ch/jpm2025 and www.urbanisme-horloger.ch