Switzerland Guide
Zürich
Schweizerisches Landesmuseum
Behind the train station, and unmistakeable in its mock-Gothic, purpose-built castle, is the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum (Swiss National Museum). This massive building has a varied collection covering the range of Swiss history, and is well worth investigation. The collection is so vast, and the layout of the place so labyrinthine, that you'd do best to consult a (free) floor-plan at the door and then head straight for those areas which interest you rather than try and absorb everything.
The museum begins with a series of rooms devoted to sacred art from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, displaying medieval wood carvings, painted altar pieces and a wheelable model of Christ on an ass. Fifteenth-century stained glass has been installed in a room which also displays a sequence of images of some less well-known saints. Rooms lead you past a reconstruction of an eighteenth-century apothecary and an intricately detailed sixteenth-century bestiary; up some stairs are several watches and clocks, and a display on exploration crowned by a spectacular two-metre-high globe dating from 1570. Stairs lead up again to a tower, with dozens of cases of costumes, some pieces of silver and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century toys. Returning back down the same stairs brings you to a sequence of Baroque and Rococo rooms, including a ceremonial hall from a Zürich house of 1660. There's also a section on military history, as well as an archeological collection, comprising a wealth of finds from Roman Zürich. Pick of the Iron Age collection is a stunning embossed golden bowl from 600 BC; Neolithic and Bronze Age artefacts bring you back round to the entrance again.
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–5pm
Price: Fr.5
Website: www.musee-suisse.com