Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
A child finds an ancient distaff in the Abbey Church museum. Touching it summons the ghost of Queen Bertha on her white horse, who takes the child on a ride through the Broye Valley, spinning thread that magically weaves the landscape into existence — fields, rivers, and villages appear with each turn of the spindle.
A child sneaks into the Gachet Chapel at night to visit Queen Bertha's tomb, but the bones whisper that they are not hers. Following clues left by 12th-century monks who falsified documents, the child hunts through Payerne's four surviving towers to find the queen's real resting place — a mystery that remains unsolved to this day.
On the night of 8 July 2010, a child at Payerne Air Base watches Solar Impulse take off and imagines flying alongside it. The plane's solar wings carry them silently over the Broye, Lake Morat, and Lake Neuchâtel through an entire night and day — 26 hours of seeing Switzerland from above, powered by nothing but sunlight.
When the nave floors are removed during the 2020 restoration, a child discovers that each layer holds a frozen moment: the 17th-century bell foundry, the 18th-century grain store, the medieval monks chanting. The building remembers every use it has endured, and now it is finally free to be itself again.
Young Antoine-Henri Jomini, son of the mayor of Payerne, stages elaborate mock battles with tin soldiers on the Place du Marché. A mysterious stranger watches and says 'one day you will write the book of war itself.' The child doesn't know it yet, but the stranger is right — and the book will be read at West Point.
It is February 1033, and the Abbey Church fills with nobles as Emperor Conrad II arrives to be crowned King of Burgundy. A child serving as a page must carry the heavy crown through the majestic 60-metre nave without dropping it — each step feels like a mile beneath the barrel vault.
A child discovers that the Abbey Church's Ahrend organ and the parish church's organ are in a secret conversation. At midnight, each plays a note the other answers, and together they tell the story of Payerne in music — from Bertha's spinning song to the roar of jet engines overhead.
It is 1531, and the reformer Guillaume Farel is preaching in the cemetery after being refused entry to the church. A child in the crowd must choose: join the mob threatening to throw him in the Broye, or help the bailiff smuggle him to safety through Payerne's medieval streets.
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