The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire is Neuchâtel's main museum and home to three objects that alone justify a visit: the Jaquet-Droz automata. Created in the 1770s by watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz and his son, these three mechanical figures — The Writer, The Draughtsman, and The Musician — represent the pinnacle of eighteenth-century automaton-making and remain the most sophisticated mechanical figures ever built from that era.
The Writer sits at a small desk and actually writes with a quill pen, dipping it in ink and forming letters. The Draughtsman sketches four images. The Musician, a young woman, plays a small pipe organ, her fingers pressing real keys, her eyes following the sheet music, her chest rising and falling as she breathes. Watching them move is genuinely uncanny — they cross the line between machine and illusion in a way that modern robotics hasn't quite replicated.
The rest of the museum covers fine arts and decorative arts from the region, with a good collection of Swiss paintings. The automata run publicly on the first Sunday of each month; check times before visiting.