Swiss Museum & Center for Electronic Music Instruments, Electronic music instruments museum in Fribourg, Switzerland

The Swiss Museum & Center for Electronic Music Instruments is a music museum at the blueFACTORY innovation campus housing thousands of synthesizers, keyboards, organs, and electronic devices across two distinct areas. The Schaulager section displays the collection with information, while the Playroom offers an interactive space where visitors can play selected instruments.

The SMEM association was founded in Fribourg in 2016 to make Klemens Niklaus Trenkle's collection accessible; the Schaulager opened on 1 July 2017 and the Playroom in 2018. The oldest instrument is a Hammond Novachord from 1938. In 2024 the Federal Office of Culture awarded the museum a Swiss Music Prize special award of 25,000 francs.

The collection shows how electronic instruments shaped music across different genres and decades, revealing the tools that musicians relied on to create new sounds. You can see the actual machines and understand why they mattered so much to the artists who used them.

Guided tours are available by appointment, while the Playroom opens on Saturday afternoons for walk-in visits where you can try some instruments yourself. It helps to check ahead for exact opening times and which instruments are available to play.

The oldest instrument in the collection is a Hammond Novachord from 1938, an early polyphonic synthesizer. Visitors also see the Millioniser, a device that even specialists encounter here for the first time, alongside a Bontempi children's synthesizer that looks like a toy.