Découvrez les musées municipaux
Toute l'offre culturelle


  • L'herbier des Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques et ses quelque six millions d’échantillons est un des plus importants au monde. Quant au jardin, il abrite de magnifiques collections de plantes vivantes.
  • Site internet du Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques


  • Le FMAC a pour missions de développer la présence de l’art dans l’espace public et de soutenir les artistes actifs et actives à Genève. Le FMAC gère la Médiathèque, un espace de consultation et de diffusion d’une collection dédiée à l'art vidéo. Le FMAC Mobile, par ses actions de médiation, favorise l’intérêt et la compréhension des publics pour le domaine de l’art contemporain.
  • Page web du Fonds municipal d’art contemporain


  • Avec une collection riche de 25'000 objets illustrant douze siècles de culture céramique, le Musée Ariana compte parmi les grands musées européens spécialisés dans les arts du feu.
  • Site internet du Musée Ariana


  • Les Musées d’art et d’histoire forment le plus grand ensemble muséal de Suisse, avec ses cinq musées et leurs 700'000 objets, sa bibliothèque et ses ateliers de restauration.
  • Site internet des Musées d'art et d'histoire


  • Haut lieu de la réflexion sur les sociétés humaines, le Musée d'ethnographie de Genève, dont les bâtiments se trouvent au boulevard Carl-Vogt propose au travers de ses expositions une variété de lectures anthropologiques des phénomènes sociaux et culturels qui traversent le monde actuel.
  • Site internet du Musée d'ethnographie


  • Le Muséum d’histoire naturelle accueille plus de 250'000 visiteurs chaque année à la découverte des millions de spécimens exceptionnels appartenant au patrimoine naturel qu'il conserve. Unique en son genre en Suisse, le Musée d'histoire des sciences - affilié au Muséum - abrite une collection d'instruments scientifiques anciens issus des cabinets des savants genevois du 17e au 19e siècle.
  • Site internet du Muséum d'histoire naturelle
    Site internet du Musée d'histoire des sciences

Online collections

Discover 2,880 online-records about objects from our collections!

After a thorough verification of the contents of each inventory record, we are pleased to make part of our institution’s collections accessible: right here.

At the end of 2017, we posted records online for the following works of art:
-    257 glass-works introduced during the museum’s permanent itinerary.
-    1840 objects shown in our study-collections.

983 new cards were added in 2018, specifically regarding the following theme:
-    the collection of Swiss pottery and enamelled glasses from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries

-   the Islamic collection from 10th to 21st century

-  the Hamburger van Beusekom collection: earthenware and porcelain from 17th and 18th centuries.

Although the general public as well as the researchers will be able to gradually access the entirety of our pieces from a virtual point of view – it should be followed by the physical visit and irreplaceable experience in the direct presence of the pieces.
This is nonetheless a beautiful way to facilitate the remote discovery of treasures within our reserves.

A megabyte of history

The exponential development of computing, which began in the mid-1970s (then followed by its widespread democratisation in the 1980s) has profoundly transformed our society. The shift from paper to computerised files, which is one of its consequences, has been a major revolution for many departments and institutions.

In Geneva’s museum world, the biggest challenge has been to establish an electronic catalogue to inventory our substantial collections. Some experimental tests took place in the 1970s (Musée d’art et d’histoire / Geneva University) followed by several separate projects created in 1985 within the museums of the City of Geneva. It was not until 1995 that some systems were put together in hope of harmonising and migrating all inventory data to a single management software. A unifying project named Musinfo was born. According to the aforementioned institutions, the software internally developed by the Directorate of Information and Communication Systems (DSIC) contained multiple applications which favoured the sharing of documentary knowledge and tools.
As of November 2002, there were 21,685 computerised records in the Ariana Museum’s database on a set of pieces estimated at the time at 22,500. Between 2008 and 2009, the Musinfo program, notably operated by the Musée Ariana and the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève, was gradually replaced by MuseumPlus – a very complete software package developed by the Swiss company Zetcom and now used by many prestigious institutions around the world.

 

Semi-automatic data transfer between software and databases can sometimes stock some unpleasant surprises and require careful analysis of each inventory sheet as a result.

Nowadays, the Ariana database accounts for 27,371 records for which each object has at least one photographic edition.