_(28648115807).jpg){kind=link}
Three steel waves rise out of a field on the eastern edge of Bern. Inside them sits the largest collection of Paul Klee anywhere: about four thousand works, roughly two fifths of everything he painted and drew.
At a glance
The Zentrum Paul Klee is a single-artist museum, and a rare one: most single-artist museums are built around a house or a studio, this one was built around a donation. Renzo Piano (born 1937) shaped it as three hills of steel and glass that follow the roll of the farmland at Schöngrün, so that from the road it registers as topography first and architecture second. The middle hill holds the exhibition halls, some 1,800 square metres of them.
Key facts
- What it is: a museum devoted to Paul Klee (1879–1940), who lived and died in Bern
- Architect: Renzo Piano, commissioned 1998, building completed 2005
- Collection: about 4,000 works, some 40 per cent of Klee’s pictorial output
- Where: Monument im Fruchtland 3, 3006 Bern
- Open: Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00; closed Monday
- Website: zpk.org
History
The museum exists because of one decision taken in 1997. Livia Klee-Meyer, the artist’s daughter-in-law, gave her inheritance — almost 690 works — to the city and canton of Bern. Further works and documents came from the family and from the Paul-Klee-Stiftung, and around two hundred more arrived as loans from private collections. What had been a dispersed holding became, in the space of a few years, the reference collection for the artist.
A site at Schöngrün, on the eastern outskirts, was chosen in 1998 and Renzo Piano was engaged the same year. A preliminary project followed in 2000 and the building opened in 2005. A community garden was added to the grounds in 2021.
Klee himself belongs to the city. He died at Muralto, near Locarno, on 29 June 1940, and was buried at the Schosshaldenfriedhof in Bern.
What you see
Piano’s three hills are not equal. The northern one holds Creaviva, an open studio where visitors of any age work with materials rather than look at them. The central hill is the exhibition space. The southern hill carries the collection stores, the archive and the research rooms — the working half of a museum, given the same skin as the public half.
The waves are a steel frame before they are a silhouette: the construction took some 4.2 kilometres of steel beams. What reads as a smooth curve from the road is, up close, a sequence of ribs.
Practical information
- Open Tuesday to Sunday 10:00–17:00, closed on Monday.
- Tickets are sold online and at the desk; the exhibition programme changes several times a year.
- Creaviva, the studio in the north hill, runs drop-in workshops alongside the exhibitions.
- Allow two hours for the galleries alone.
Getting there
Bus 12 from Bern main station runs to the Zentrum Paul Klee, which is the end of the line, in about twenty minutes. The route crosses the old town past the Käfigturm and the Zytglogge, drops to the Nydeggbrücke and the bear pits, then climbs the Grosser Muristalden. In the evening the 12 serves the museum until midnight.
Nearby
- The old city of Bern, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on the bus route back into town.
- The Zytglogge, the astronomical clock tower the number 12 passes under.
- The Federal Palace, seat of the Swiss parliament, in the upper old town.
Sources
- Zentrum Paul Klee — address, opening hours and current programme.
- Zentrum Paul Klee, How to get here — the number 12 bus route and journey time.
- English Wikipedia, Zentrum Paul Klee — the 1997 Klee-Meyer donation, the choice of architect, the sequence of construction dates and the use of the three hills.
- German Wikipedia, Zentrum Paul Klee — 1,800 square metres of exhibition space and 4.2 kilometres of steel beams.
- English Wikipedia, Paul Klee — his death at Muralto on 29 June 1940 and his burial at the Schosshaldenfriedhof in Bern.
- Wikidata (Q191189) — coordinates and postal address.
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →Events here — now on & upcoming
- Fokus. Florence Henri (1893–1982) — Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern29 Aug 2026 — 10 Jan 2027See the event →
📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photoIs this page about you?
This page is read by travellers and heritage enthusiasts who find it on Google. Tell us how you are connected to this place and we will take it from there.