Fondation Beyeler

Although it numbers fewer than 250 works, the permanent collection at the superb Fondation Beyeler feels like an essential edit of modern art’s masterpieces, in a setting that’s both serene and gloriously eccentric – in a suitably understated Swiss way, naturally. The Renzo Piano-designed museum sits reflected in a lily pond in the bucolic Berower Park at the city’s edge, among sculptures by the likes of Ellsworth Kelly and Alexander Calder. Meanwhile inside, world-famous works by Monet, Picasso and Bacon share space with rare tribal sculptures from Oceania and Africa. Paintings by Matisse, Van Goch, Lichtenstein and Baselitz are also full-time fixtures, but the impeccably curated temporary exhibitions are what really make a fleeting visit to the Beyeler an impossibility. The low-rise building’s intimate ambience belies hangaresque dimensions which have in recent years hosted once-in-a-lifetime shows by Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Viennese Secessionists and Max Ernst.