Your child becomes the hero of a story set right here in La Chaux-de-Fonds — at the city's real landmarks, in the familiar streets, in front of the buildings they know from everyday life.
A fantasy adventure, a birthday gift, courage at the dentist, friendship on the first day of school — or any of 170+ themes from our library. Create a free account, pick your topic in the wizard, we set the story in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
Below you find La Chaux-de-Fonds's historical tales — from old legends to famous local events. Create a free account, pick one as your starting point, your child takes a role inside it.
Real stories from La Chaux-de-Fonds's past — pick one and your child takes a role
After the Great Fire of 1794 reduces La Chaux-de-Fonds to ashes, a child helps engineer Junod design the new grid city by showing him how sunlight falls through her father's watchmaking loupe onto the workshop table. Together they discover that an entire city can be built to follow the sun, turning devastation into a blueprint for the world's most luminous town.
A lost watch gear rolls through the streets of La Chaux-de-Fonds, passing from workshop to workshop -- gem-cutter, escapement-maker, profile turner -- in a frantic chase through the etablissage system. A child must follow the tiny gear across all 3,000 workshops and retrieve every missing component to complete the watch before the cathedral clock strikes midnight.
Young Charles-Edouard builds a house for his parents high on the Jura plateau and keeps redesigning it -- walls move, pillars multiply, the roof floats away. A child from the neighbourhood helps him understand that a home needs heart, not just pillars and plans, and together they discover the soul behind the Maison Blanche's white walls.
Born on Christmas Day to a watchmaker father, young Louis Chevrolet dreams of speed instead of springs. A child follows his journey from bicycle races through the streets of Beaune to the roaring American racetracks where he defeats the legendary Barney Oldfield -- discovering that the precision of a watchmaker's hands can build the fastest cars in the world.
A child sneaks into the Salle de Musique at night and discovers that the walnut walls were built like a giant violin, using the ancient craft of lutherie. When the child touches a key, the hall itself begins to sing -- and the ghost of pianist Claudio Arrau appears, asking for one last audience to hear the most beautiful piano in the world.
In 1872, a child overhears Bakunin speaking to a room full of watchmakers in La Chaux-de-Fonds. As the anarchist's words grow louder, the gears of the watches on the workbenches begin turning backwards. The child must decide a riddle posed by the spinning hands: does time belong to everyone, or only to the factory owner who controls the clock?
Teacher L'Eplattenier takes his students into the Jura forest to study fir trees, and young Jeanneret sees architecture hidden in the branches. When the child touches a carved fir cone on the facade of Villa Fallet, the ornament comes alive, revealing that every Art Nouveau building in La Chaux-de-Fonds hides a secret pattern borrowed from the forest.
On the coldest winter night at 992 metres altitude, every clock in the Musee International d'Horlogerie suddenly stops at once. A child must descend into the underground museum and wind the great carillon clock to restart time itself, racing through galleries of silent automata and frozen pendulums before the snow buries the grid city forever.
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Your child as the main character in a story set right here.
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