In the beautiful Jura mountain of Neuchatel canton near French border is where La Chaux-de-Fonds located, the third largest French speaking city of Switzerland and one of the most unique world heritage site in terms of inscription reason. There were many world heritage sites under the category of urban planning, La Chaux-de-Fonds’ nomination was dedicated to watch making industry city which in my opinion, a very interesting way to introduce the city as Cité Horlogère.

Admittedly La Chaux-de-Fonds actually was not in my original Switzerland plan, due to severely bad weather in the Jungfrau area, I had to cancel and need to go somewhere else instead, and La Chaux-de-Fonds was the chosen one since it was only 1.30 hour from Zurich by express train. The scenery between Biel and La Chaux-de-Fonds in May maybe one of the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in this country, the Heidi land with countless hills of beautiful alpine flowers, a great compensation to Jungfrau.

When I reached the city, I directly went to the famous international museum of watch making. The museum was great for watch enthusiasts and its collections easily could keep everyone inside for hours from early industrial clocks to futuristic ones or from heavily gilded watches with jewels to colorful plastic ones, one of the best museums of this region. However apart from the museum, I could not find anything special from the city except a city was well designed in block pattern liked New York’s Manhattan, and few pretty buildings that were so typical in Swiss towns.

Before I visited the city, I expected to see some watch factories open for tourists to explore or many shops selling watches and clocks produced locally, but no nothing was there, the Cité Horlogère was really hard to enjoy and apart from the museum, there was no reason to visit. At the end of the day, the amazing scenery from the train and the museum were my memories, I hardly remember anything from the city itself. As I mentioned La Chaux-de-Fonds’ nomination as Cité Horlogère was very interesting, but to be interested when visit was a totally different story.