Zentrum Paul Klee

Renzo Piano turned a field on the eastern edge of Bern into three steel waves, completed in 2005, that rise out of the ground and hold, between them, the world's largest collection of Paul Klee's work. The centre owns several thousand pieces by Paul Klee, about forty per cent of his pictorial work, built on almost 690 works given in 1997 by his daughter-in-law Livia Klee-Meyer, most of it small, on paper, and too light-sensitive to hang for long. The display therefore changes two or three times a year and no visit repeats another. Rooms are low and dim by necessity. Alongside the pictures sit his letters, notebooks and teaching material from the Bauhaus years, and a studio where visitors work through the exercises he set his own students.

Highlights

• The Piano waves - three hills of steel and glass built into the slope of the field.
• The rotating display - hung in short runs because the works on paper cannot take light.
• The Bauhaus material - notebooks, colour exercises and lecture sheets from his teaching.
• The open studio - a working room using Klee's own exercises, aimed at families.

When to go

Closed on Monday. Because the hanging rotates two or three times a year, check what is up before travelling if there is a particular work you want to stand in front of. Summer suits the walk out from the city through the Schosshalde; winter afternoons are quiet. Concerts and talks use the auditorium in the middle wave through the season.

Before you go

Klee's work is small, quiet and best in short doses, and visitors expecting big canvases often leave puzzled. Only a fraction of the collection is out at any time, so the specific piece you came for may well be in storage. The building is a bus ride from the old town and sits between a cemetery and a motorway, which is an odd setting.

Nearby

Bern old town is fifteen minutes back by bus, with the Rosengarten viewpoint on the way.

Key facts