Switzerland's largest ethnographic museum, with particularly strong collections from the South Pacific, Mesoamerica, Tibet, and Bali. The building, a striking Pritzker-listed extension by Herzog & de Meuron, sits just behind the Minster and is impossible to miss — the scalloped roof looks like a large reptile sheltering against the old stone walls.
The permanent collection runs to several hundred thousand objects. The displays are thoughtful and well-contextualised rather than simply accumulative. Temporary exhibitions have covered everything from textiles to ritual masks. It is one of the more intellectually serious museums in Basel and often overlooked by visitors focused on the art institutions.