In 1864, 37 Farmers Made a Pact So You Could Land a Paraglider Here Today

There is a 14-hectare meadow in the dead centre of Interlaken. It has no buildings on it. It has no fences. It has no parking. Every other Swiss town built up its core with hotels, banks and boutiques. Interlaken kept this open green field at the heart of town.

If you have visited Interlaken, you have stood on it. It is called the Höhematte, which means high meadow in Swiss German, and it is the single most famous meadow in the Alps. Paragliders land on it. Tourists eat ice cream on it. Children chase footballs on it. The Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau rise behind it like a backdrop painted by someone with too much budget.

But almost nobody who walks across the Höhematte knows the story of how it survived.

This is the story of 37 farmers, a stubborn pact signed in 1864, and the reason Switzerland has its most photographed urban meadow.

The Geography That Made the Meadow

Interlaken sits on a flat alluvial plain between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz. The plain was deposited over thousands of years by the Aare river and its tributaries, leaving behind a strip of fertile flat ground in a valley otherwise dominated by mountain walls. By the Middle Ages, this flat strip was already being farmed.

In the 12th century, the Augustinian monks of the Kloster Interlaken (the monastery from which the town takes its name, between the lakes) controlled the land. The Höhematte was used for grazing and hay. The mountains south of the meadow were too steep for agriculture, and the marshy edges of the lakes were unusable. The Höhematte itself was the central productive field of the entire valley.

After the Reformation in the 16th century, the monastery was secularised and the land transferred to the local Bernese state. By the 18th century, the Höhematte had been divided among local farmers, who used it for cattle pasture and the production of hay. The meadow had been a working agricultural field for at least 600 years.

Then came the tourists.

The Threat: 19th-Century Tourism

By the early 1800s, Interlaken was becoming famous in Europe. Lord Byron visited in 1816 and wrote about the views in Manfred. The first English aristocrats arrived in the 1820s, taking the long carriage ride from Bern to spend summers contemplating the Jungfrau. Hotels began opening along what is now the Höheweg, the elegant boulevard that flanks the north edge of the Höhematte.

By the 1850s, the demand for hotel land was growing rapidly. Real estate prices on the Höheweg climbed. Investors looked at the empty meadow in the centre of town and saw a missed opportunity. A consortium proposed buying the Höhematte and turning it into a development zone with hotels, gardens, casinos, perhaps even a small park with paid admission.

The pressure was real. Many Swiss towns of comparable size lost their central commons to 19th-century development. Lucerne built up the lake front. Geneva paved the Jardin Anglais. Lausanne lost its old market field. The Höhematte was, by the standards of European urban planning at the time, an obvious candidate for the same fate.

The 37 farmers who owned the meadow had a decision to make.

The Pact: 1864

In December 1864, the 37 landowners with rights to the Höhematte signed a founding agreement creating the Höhematten-Allmend (literally the Höhematte commons) and an association called the Höhe-Interessentschaft (the Heights Stakeholders Association).

The agreement set one rule, and one rule only:

Nothing shall ever be built on the Höhematte. The view of the mountains shall remain open for all, in perpetuity.

The contract was registered. The meadow was placed in collective ownership under the association. Each of the 37 founding members held one share. Shares could be inherited but never sold to non-members. Decisions required a supermajority of the entire stakeholder group.

The structure was deliberately almost impossible to dissolve. Even if a future generation wanted to build, they could not, because no single member could sell, no minority could force a vote, and the contract was registered with the Bernese cantonal authorities as a perpetual servitude on the land.

The 37 farmers were not romantics. They were practical. They understood that a permanently open meadow with a permanently open mountain view would be more valuable to the entire town in 100 years than any short-term real estate gain.

They were right.

160 Years Later

The Höhematte is still grass. The Jungfrau still rises above it. The Höhe-Interessentschaft still exists, and the descendants of the original 37 families still meet every spring in the Hauptversammlung to vote on minor matters of meadow management (mowing schedule, drainage, occasional event permits).

The agreement has been tested repeatedly. In the 1920s, a casino proposal threatened the south edge. Rejected. In the 1960s, a parking garage was proposed beneath the surface. Rejected. In the 1990s, a hotel chain offered the association what was then a fortune for a single corner. Rejected.

Today, the Höhematte hosts:

• Paragliding landings : nearly every commercial tandem flight in Interlaken ends here, dozens per day in season.

• The Tellspiele : an open-air theatre festival performed every summer since 1912, telling the story of William Tell.

• Public events : Swiss national day celebrations, music festivals, occasional sporting events.

• Daily life : children playing football, tourists picnicking, students lying on the grass, paragliding pilots stretching between flights.
  

A handful of horse-drawn carriages still cross the meadow daily. The Jungfraubahnen (which operates the Jungfraujoch railway) leases a small portion of the Höhematte's edge for its station building. The lease is temporary and the structure must be removable. The 1864 agreement still holds.

Why the Story Matters to Travelers

When you stand on the Höhematte today and watch a paraglider spiral down toward the grass, you are witnessing a 160-year-old promise being kept.

That is not a small thing.

Most landscapes you visit as a tourist are accidents of geography. The Höhematte is an act of will. It exists in its current form because 37 specific people, with names recorded in the cantonal archive (Tschiffeli, Wäfler, Indermühle, Zumkehr, and others), made a deliberate, unsexy, financially counterproductive decision to protect a view.

Without them, the Höhematte would be hotels. Paragliding in Interlaken would not exist in its current form, because there would be no central landing zone. The view that brings 1.5 million tourists to Interlaken every year would be partially blocked by the buildings that those tourists would have stayed in.

This is the kind of detail that makes Switzerland Switzerland. Long horizons. Stubborn agreements. Decisions made by farmers in 1864 that are still binding in 2026.

How to Visit the Höhematte Today

The Höhematte is open to the public year-round. You can walk across it freely. There is no entrance fee, no opening hours, no closing time.

The best ways to experience it:

• At sunset on a clear summer evening. The light hits the Jungfrau between 8 and 9 p.m. in July, and the meadow turns gold. Bring a blanket and a bottle of wine.

• During paragliding hours (roughly 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in summer). Sit on the grass and watch tandems land every few minutes.

• At dawn on a still morning. The meadow is empty. The mountains are pink. You can have the entire centre of Interlaken to yourself.

• During the Tellspiele season (mid-July to early September) for the open-air William Tell performances.

The best paragliding experience for visitors who want to land here themselves: see our complete local guide to paragliding in Interlaken.

💡 Insider Tip from Pierre If you walk across the Höhematte at 7 a.m. on a clear summer morning, before the first paragliders launch and before the cafés open on the Höheweg, you have one of the most peaceful 14-hectare green spaces in the Alps to yourself. Bring a coffee from the train station kiosk. Sit on the bench at the western edge facing the Jungfrau. That is what Lord Byron would have done in 1816, and it has not changed.

FAQ — The Höhematte Story

What is the Höhematte in Interlaken? The Höhematte is a 14-hectare meadow in the centre of Interlaken, kept permanently free of buildings since 1864 by an agreement between 37 local landowners. It is the main paragliding landing zone in the region and a public green space.

Why is the Höhematte protected? In 1864, the 37 farmers who owned the meadow signed a binding agreement creating the Höhe-Interessentschaft, an association that prevents any construction on the land in perpetuity. The aim was to preserve the view of the Jungfrau for the town's future.

Can you walk on the Höhematte? Yes. It is fully open to the public year-round. No entrance fee, no opening hours.

Where do paragliders land in Interlaken? On the Höhematte, the central meadow of Interlaken. It is one of the most famous tandem paragliding landing zones in Europe.

What does Höhematte mean? High meadow in Swiss German. The name refers to its position on the elevated alluvial plain above the surrounding lake levels.

Who owns the Höhematte today? The Höhe-Interessentschaft, an association of around 37 local stakeholders descended from the original 1864 founding members. The land cannot be sold to outside parties.

Visit the Meadow That History Saved

The Höhematte is not the most spectacular meadow you will ever see. There are higher alpine pastures with bigger views. There are wildflowers in Lauterbrunnen and panoramas at Schynige Platte that beat it on raw beauty.

What the Höhematte has that no other meadow in the Alps has is a story. A 160-year-old story about how a small group of farmers made a decision in 1864 that is still shaping the town in 2026.

If you want to experience the meadow at its best, plan around either dawn or sunset, bring a layer for the cool evening air, and stay long enough to watch a paraglider land. That moment, when a stranger drops out of the sky onto a meadow protected by a contract older than most countries, is one of the most genuinely Swiss things you can witness as a visitor.

For a full local guide to the town and the surrounding region, see things to do in Interlaken. For the experience of landing on the meadow yourself, Swiss Local Adventures can help you plan a paragliding day with the operators who land here every afternoon.

Some destinations are accidents. The Höhematte is a deliberate act of preservation, signed in ink in 1864, still holding in 2026.

Written by Pierre, your local guide at Swiss Local Adventures