Musée Rath, Art museum in Place Neuve, Geneva, Switzerland.
The Musée Rath is an art museum on Place Neuve in Geneva, with a neoclassical facade modeled on a Greek temple, standing at the edge of the old city. The building is made up of several gallery rooms with vaulted ceilings, used throughout the year for temporary exhibitions.
The Musée Rath opened in 1826 as the first building in Switzerland built specifically to display art. The funding came from the Rath family, whose donation made the project possible at a time when Geneva had no dedicated space for showing collections.
The Musée Rath hosts rotating exhibitions that bring together works from very different periods and origins under the same vaulted ceilings. Walking through the building, you get a sense of how Geneva uses this space as a meeting point between its local art scene and the wider world.
The museum opens only when exhibitions are running, so it is worth checking what is currently on before making your way there. It sits directly on Place Neuve, close to the Promenade des Bastions park, making it easy to combine with a walk through that part of the city.
Between 1916 and 1919, the building served as the headquarters of the Red Cross's International Prisoners-of-War Agency during World War I. From this space, millions of messages were coordinated between prisoners and their families across Europe.
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