Musée d'Art et d'Histoire

Geneva's biggest and best museum, and technically free to enter — they put out a box for donations, a few francs is fair, but nobody is stopping you at the door. It's a beautiful Beaux-Arts building in the Vieille Ville with a permanent collection that keeps surprising you. There's a Picasso. There's a Chagall. There are rooms full of swords and antique firearms that look like the inside of a very well-organised castle.

And then there's usually some interesting temporary installation going on in the courtyard. Currently: a giant inflatable bubble that you can actually walk inside. If you want to sit inside a giant bubble — this is your museum.

The permanent collection is the kind where you wander in expecting to spend 45 minutes and find yourself still there two hours later. The cow painting in particular — a massive Swiss Alpine cow on a teal wall — is the kind of thing that stops you cold in a room and makes you realise you've been underrating cow paintings your whole life.

The weaponry rooms are also genuinely interesting. The gun cabinet is properly arresting — rows of decorated flintlock pistols behind glass, the kind of thing you don't expect to just be standing in front of, free, on a Tuesday. The sword display is properly medieval.

The tip within the tip: the café in the basement. Beautiful stone arches, a Murano glass chandelier, a circular wooden bar. Good cakes, proper coffee, a glass of wine if you want one. It's the kind of place you'd go to specifically if you knew about it. Most people don't — they're upstairs looking at the cow. Use this to your advantage.