Haus zur Sonne, Fricktaler Museum

Haus zur Sonne, Fricktaler Museum stands beside Rheinfelden’s town hall in Aargau, Switzerland, inside a four-storey building with a gabled roof. Its classicist façade combines light plaster, brick-red stonework, pilasters, and carefully framed cross windows. A gilded inn sign shows a sun surrounded by rocaille ornamentation above the street. Open arcades and the inner courtyard display the lapidarium, while a vaulted cellar rests beneath the main house.

The collection follows Rheinfelden and the Fricktal from late prehistory to the early Middle Ages and beyond. Archaeological finds, sacred art, medieval crafts, guild objects, fishing equipment, and domestic belongings connect regional history with everyday life. City models, watercolours, and eighteenth-century wall tapestries add visual traces of Rheinfelden’s changing streets and interiors. Founded from an antiquities commission in 1878, the collection moved through the Hugenfeld schoolhouse and town hall before settling here in 1934. Inside, a coffered ceiling from 1627 carries carved lion heads, while the original rafter roof structure dates from 1658 and 1659.