This Immersive Swiss Bar Honors The Artist Who Designed The Terrifying Creature From Alien

If you take a walk through the medieval town of Gruyères at the base of the Pre-Alps in Switzerland, you'll wander through cobblestone, fairy-tale streets on your way up to a 13th-century castle. Maybe you came because, as the name suggests, it's the birthplace of one of the best cheeses to cook with, Gruyère. You walk through a passageway under a building and come out to see a beautiful stone courtyard and eerie statues from a popular movie franchise. You've found the museum and cafe for H.R. Giger, the visionary Swiss artist behind the nightmarish designs from "Alien."

Inside is a cafe and bar filled with visual motifs from Ridley Scott's classic film. The strange biologies envisioned by Giger are on full display. It's not just a cafe with memorabilia serving as decorations like at a Planet Hollywood, but rather a fully immersive environment. Arches of otherworldly spines twist over and around you as you eat. Disturbing baby faces protrude from the walls as you sit in chairs made from alien skeletons. 

There's no meaningful connection between the town of Gruyères and H.R. Giger. He simply found it to be beautiful. In 1990, he was asked to showcase his work at the castle in the village, and fell in love with the region. Eventually, a 400-year-old country house in town, Château St. Germain, came up for sale and he bought it to turn it into his own museum. It opened in 1998, and the cafe opened up five years later in 2003. Everything is made from polished concrete to give it the look of bone. You are eating inside something that was once large and terrifying and inconceivable to our brains.

While the food and drink served wouldn't land the H.R. Giger cafe on our list of the top museum cafes in the world, it's still worth a visit. Check the website for hours as they vary depending on the season. If you like places that invest thought into their decor, like Cracker Barrel, give this nightmare-fueled café, complete with Harkonnen-inspired chairs built from otherworldly spines and pelvises instead of rocking chairs, a try.