Barbier-Mueller Museum

Tribal treasures from times past
Noteworthy for: This is the world's largest collection of so-called primitive art, one that some scholars consider to be the best.

With a collection started in 1907 and still being added to, the Barbier-Mueller Museum houses artefacts from almost every corner of the world. Specialising in what was long called primitive art (and hasn't yet found a better name), many of the museum's 7000 pieces are in fact exquisite and highly sophisticated, and include megalithic monuments from Indonesia, pre-Colombian jade jewellery, Malian pottery, and religious statues from Oceania.
At the centre of the collection, however, is a large, varied collection of masks from all over the world, with such a diversity of shapes, construction methods and purposes that for some they are one of Geneva's unexpected cultural highlights.