The Museum Quarter guides you through a vibrant universe. It tells stories, acts as a storage facility for cultural goods and stages exhibitions and events. It is where learning is fun, education is entertaining, and art is experienced first-hand. The quarter is not just a place to visit, but a world full of adventure, encounters and inspiration that invites you to participate – again and again. With more than 500,000 visitors annually, it is the largest cultural area anywhere in Switzerland.
Located in the heart of Bern, its museum gardens also offer a place of calm to retreat to and relax surrounded by historical buildings and contemporary architecture. A place where you can feel at ease and let yourself be enchanted. No matter how far you have travelled to be here.
The Museum Quarter in Bern is a group of eleven institutions that are proud to be part of a vibrant network. The special aspect of the Bern project is that it is not determined by external factors but continues to develop organically out of the initiative and collaboration between all the institutions involved.
The eleven institutions:
- Swiss Alpine Museum
- Bernisches Historisches Museum
- Gymnasium Kirchenfeld
- Kunsthalle Bern
- Museum of Communication
- Natural History Museum Bern
- Bern University of Teacher Education, Institute of Advanced Training and Media Education
- Swiss Shooting Museum Bern
- Swiss National Library
- Stadtarchiv Bern
- Yehudi Menuhin Forum Bern
Exhibition tips at Museumsquartier
Greenland - Everything changes, until August 2026
Rapidly melting ice sheets, booming tourism, three new airports under construction, ever-larger waste heaps, international investors in search of mineral resources, and a confident Greenland developing its Indigenous identity and independence. Greenland’s transformation is intense, turbulent, and contradictory. But what do the people there think of it all? What does this teach us about the world we live in? How do we deal with the dilemmas and contradictions? What scares us about it and what opportunities are at stake? ‘Greenland. Everything changes’ stands for a world that also exists in Switzerland and challenges us.
Forgotten by Fortune - Compulsory Welfare Measures in Bern and Switzerland, Bernisches Historischen Museum - until januar 2026
Placed in out-of-home care, put to work, placed in guardianship, housed in institutions: by around the 1970s, several hundred thousand children, adolescents and adults in Switzerland had been subjected to compulsory welfare measures and fostering. In the Canton of Bern they numbered at least fifty thousand. Many came from difficult social or economic backgrounds. If a family did not conform to middle-class norms, the authorities reacted with repressive measures that violated personal rights.
The exhibition, curated by historian Tanja Rietmann, focuses on five people affected. For the exhibition, scenographer Karin Bucher has created walk-in rooms made entirely out of cardboard, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the stories of these people. Audio plays and archive documents recount their fates. And the question is asked: How does what happened affect us today?
