Schweizerisches Landesmuseum

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Lonely Planet review

The Swiss Museum, set in an imitation castle, is a great big cream cake of a place; try to digest it all in one go and you could come away feeling bloated. The permanent collection gives the ultimate rundown on Swiss life and times from the prehistoric to the present. The special exhibitions are usually enticing.

There's a good selection of church art, plus weapons, coins, room interiors, costumes and utensils. The fresco in the Hall of Arms, the Retreat of the Swiss Confederates at Marignano , is by Ferdinand Hodler. In the basement there's an interesting section on book-inscribing in the Middle Ages (you'll discover that the colour purple was extracted from snails), including some fine facsimiles of 14th-century books to leaf through.