Visiting Switzerland and don’t know where to go?
If you scroll below you’ll find multiple places to make you want to come to find these Museum treasures. Especially with the 2×1 PROMO from 9 March to 16 April find out for information below!
Swiss treasures
Collected, on a human scale and immersed in nature: Swiss cities stand out for the quality of life and the wealth of cultural and recreational opportunities. Switzerland is not only uncontaminated landscapes but hides an artistic and cultural treasure still little known to non-experts. With 1081 museums, it boasts the highest density of museums in the world. Political stability, neutrality, tax breaks and banking secrecy: these are the factors that have contributed to the creation of private collections and the phenomenon of patronage that has allowed the opening of museums throughout the territory which, according to 2021 data from the Federal Office of statistics, conserve and exhibit on rotation 77.1 million objects.
The Art Museums of Switzerland (AMOS) association was established in 2016 to promote the main art museums abroad. Located in charming towns, the ten internationally renowned museums offer works of extraordinary quality in contained spaces. They are also easily accessible thanks to the Eurocity trains that connect Milan, Bologna, Venice and Genoa to the main cities.
2×1 PROMO: how it works.
By purchasing the 2×1 Promo, two travel by paying for a single 1st or 2nd class ticket, from 9 March to 16 April from Milan/Genoa/Bologna/Venice to Basel, Bern, Lausanne, Lucerne, Lugano, Montreux, Zurich and Geneva and many other Swiss cities.
The offer, subject to limited availability, is valid for purchases made between 3 March and 13 April 2023, at least three days before the desired departure date.
Tickets for the 2×1 Promo can only be purchased in Italy at station ticket offices, on the website www.trenitalia.com, via the Trenitalia App (by selecting the name of the offer called PROMO 2×1) and in authorized travel agencies.
High density museums.
Basel is considered the cultural capital of Switzerland with 40 museums in 37 km2 – among which the Beyeler Foundation, the Kunstmuseum and the Jean Tinguely Museum stand out. Every year it becomes a mecca for contemporary art with Art Basel. But all cities share the same passion for art and culture. At the forefront of architectural styles and contents, the Swiss museum offer ranges from contemporary art to science, from transport to watchmaking with a vivacity of proposals and inexhaustible research.
As a leading city for the art trade, Zurich boasts over 50 museums and more than 100 galleries. From the birthplace of Dadaism to the largest collection of Swiss cultural history to Le Corbusier’s latest work, Zurich offers countless artistic highlights. The permanent collection of the Kunsthaus with sculptures and pictorial panels from the Middle Ages to Expressionism is worth a visit. On the other hand, the masterpieces of non-European art are exhibited at the Rietberg Museum.
The avant-garde is on stage in Lucerne which amazes with its cultural vivacity. The jewel in the crown is the futuristic Art and Congress Center (KKL), designed by Jean Nouvel, which hosts internationally renowned events such as the Lucerne Festival. At the Rosengart Collection you can admire works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee and exponents of Impressionism.
With around 4,000 works, the Paul Klee Center in Bern – a visionary wave-shaped building designed by Renzo Piano – houses the most complete collection of the Swiss painter in the world. Also in Bern, at the Historical Museum, you can admire the section dedicated to Albert Einstein which illustrates the human and professional career of the scientist with the aid of audiovisual and interactivity.
In Geneva, the imposing Forces Motrices cultural center “floats” in the middle of the Rhone, a former hydroelectric plant that houses a theatre, spaces for opera and exhibitions that can accommodate up to 950 visitors. The Martin Bodmer Museum, designed by Mario Botta, exhibits 150,000 pieces in 80 languages, distributed over a period of three millennia: the oldest manuscript of the Gospel of John, the
original of Grimm’s Tales, the only Gutenberg Bible in Switzerland, the autographs of a Mozart’s string quintet or the only almost completely preserved copy of a comedy by the Athenian poet Menander are just a few of the rarities in the extensive collection of founder Martin Bodmer.
Upcoming openings
Recent openings include the Mudac (June 2022) inside the Plateforme10 museum complex in Lausanne, adjacent to the railway station, and the Pavillon Novartis in Basel (May 2022) dedicated to research in the medical field. In 2023 the International Museum of the Reform will reopen in Geneva, after the renovation works, and the inauguration of the Science Gateway is planned, an “immersive” exhibition area designed by Renzo Piano, to disseminate the scientific discoveries of Cern. Peter Zumthor, on the other hand, was entrusted with the task of creating the new wing of the Beyeler Foundation in Basel.
Interactive museums:
Technorama Winterthur
In Technorama you can touch everything, play, experiment. A visit to this science center allows you to discover hundreds of phenomena from the world of nature and technology. Thanks to its numerous interactive installations, visitors can actively participate and experience a series of natural phenomena on their skin and with the five senses, to “grasp” the world, both with the mind and with the hands.
Info: www.technorama.ch
Basel Paper Museum
A restored mill of medieval origin houses the Basel Paper Museum which exhibits traditional objects related to the history of paper, writing and printing and illustrates the practical exercise of the related techniques. Like new Gutenbergs, visitors can try to produce and print a piece of paper themselves.
Info: www.baslerpapiermuehle.ch
Ballenberg Ethnographic Museum
How do you bake bread in a charcoal oven? How is linen woven or bobbin lace worked? How is metal forged or coal mined? 100 original Swiss houses and courtyards can be admired in the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum of Ethnography near Brienz. You stroll through fields, meadows and orchards, and
in the large medicinal herb garden you learn about countless healing plants. You can also come across typical farmyard animals or traditional crafts that are revived thanks to the craftsmen who have kept their secrets.
Info: www.ballenberg.ch
Olympic Museum in Lausanne
Inaugurated 23 years ago and completely redesigned in 2013, the Olympic Museum – the fourth most visited museum in Switzerland (about 300,000 visitors a year) – is the main cultural attraction in Lausanne. Spread over three levels, each floor is dedicated to a particular dimension of modern Olympism. Thanks to the extensive use of the most modern integrated means of communication, the visitor is involved in various simulations and interactive experiences, made usable thanks to numerous information tablets, a 180° screen and numerous installations that simulate the competition fields.
Info: https://olympics.com/museum
Calendar of upcoming exhibitions in the Art Museums of Switzerland.
The Art Museums of Switzerland (Amos) association brings together the most important Swiss museums of art, design and photography. Their rich collections are not limited to the protagonists of art history, but are dynamically enriched with incursions into contemporary art, continually welcoming the works of emerging artists.BASILEA
Kunstmuseum Basel Hauptbau (main building): Born in Ukraine (up to July 2, 2023).
Exhibition dedicated to the works of 31 Ukrainian artists from the Kyiv National Art Gallery, the national art museum of Ukraine.
Kunstmuseum Basel Neubau (new building): Shirley Jaffe. Form as Experiment (from March 25 to July 30, 2023).
On display are the works of the painter – American by birth but who lived in Paris – considered an exponent of Abstract Expressionism.
Kunstmuseum Basel Gegenwart (building dedicated to contemporary art): Fun Feminism (fino al 19 marzo 2023).
Selection of key works by female artists – including Guerrilla Girls, Pipilotti Rist, Martha Rosler and Rosemarie Trockel – which belong to the Kunstmuseum’s collection but are rarely exhibited. The collective exhibition invites us to abandon the stereotype of a humorless feminism emphasizing, instead, joy, play and irreverence.
Info: www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch
Fondation Beyeler: Wayne Thiebaud (up to May 21, 2023).
Monographic exhibition of the extraordinary American painter Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) who in his still lifes depicting everyday objects evokes the promises of the “American way of life”.
Info: www.fondationbeyeler.ch
Museum Tinguely: À bruit secret. Hearing in Art (up to May 14, 2023).
It is the fourth in a series of thematic exhibitions on the 5 senses. Focusing on hearing, which plays an important role in the multisensory experiences of art, the exhibition offers various immersive and interactive encounters with familiar and less familiar soundscapes.
Info: www.tinguely.ch
BERNA
Paul Klee Centrer: Joan Mirò. New Beginnings (up to May 7, 2023).
The exhibition comprises 74 works, mostly from the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Most of them come from the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró in Mallorca and are being exhibited for the first time in Switzerland.
Info: www.zpk.org
LUGANO
Museum of Art of Italian Switzerland (seat of the LAC): Rita Ackermann. Hidden (March 12 – August 13, 2023).
The exhibition focuses on Ackermann’s early works starting from the 1990s and presents around fifty paintings and drawings made by Ackermann over the past 30 years in New York.
Museum of Art of Italian Switzerland (Palazzo Reali): Hedi Mertens. The logic of intuition (April 2 – October 15, 2023).
The exhibition returns to the public the work and the singular story of an artist who, starting from a profound theoretical knowledge, found in Ticino the favorable conditions to develop her own artistic research.
Info: www.masilugano.ch
GINEVRA
Mamco – Museum of Contemporary Art: Daniel Grataloup (until 2 April 2023).
Exhibition of models by architect Daniel Gratalup combining sprayed concrete, the mollusk shape and “multi-shell” structures.
Info: www.mamco.ch
LAUSANNE
The exhibition evokes the history of soft focus (or out of focus) in photography, from the invention of the process up to the present day. Dotted with comparisons with painting and cinema, it tells – in particular, with key works – the evolution of this form, as well as the values associated with it according to the eras and the various photographic practices.
Info: www.elysee.ch
Museum of Design and Applied Arts (c/o Plateforme10): Dialogue between an octopus and a citrus squeezer (from 7 April 2023 to 7 January 2024).
This surprising and eccentric exploration immerses visitors for the first time in the diversity of Mudac’s collections, bringing together works of contemporary design, glass art, ceramics, graphic arts and jewellery.
Info: www.mudac.ch
ZURICH
Museum fur Gestaltung Zürich (main building c/o Austellungstrasse): Collection Highlights / 6 Zimmer x 6 Positionen (until 23 March).
This listed building from the 1930s is a key work of the Neues Bauen movement in Switzerland and a must for architecture enthusiasts. The “Collection Highlights” exhibition presents design icons such as the Rex potato peeler or the Swiss army knife from Victorinox, but also fonts such as “Helvetica”. Alongside, with a guided tour in the name of variety, “6 Zimmer × 6 Positionen” allows you to get to know the current themes of a new generation of designers: the museum has asked contemporary Swiss artists to set up a room each with objects from the collection . In the corridor on the second floor, a selection of around 80 poster reproductions gives a taste of the largest collection of posters in the world, illustrating the related themes as well as their geographical and historical significance in an exemplary way.
Info: www.museum-gestaltung.ch
Kunsthaus Zürich: Fuseli. Fashion – Fetishism – Fantasy (until May 21, 2023).
A collection of about 60 works to get to know the designer Henry Fuseli in his most innovative and exciting moment, as the creator of a fascinating pictorial universe that is as provocative as it is stimulating.
Info: www.kunsthaus.ch
WINTERTHUR
Fotomuseum Winterthur: Valie Export. The photographs (until 23 May 2023).
The exhibition presents for the first time the photographic work of Valie Export (*1940), who caused a stir above all with her partly provocative experimental performances and installations.
Tourism Board of Switzerland: Myswitzerland.com
Daniela spino
