The Jewish Museum of Switzerland has reopened its doors
30 November 2025
The Jewish Museum of Switzerland (Jüdisches Museum der Schweiz) has found a new home in a lavishly renovated wooden building in Basel, which opened on 30 November 2025. The former tobacco warehouse on Vesalgasse, which borders the medieval Jewish cemetery, combines Jewish history with contemporary architecture.
Opening speech by Naomi Lubrich, director of the Jewish Museum of Switzerland
The striking frontispiece and medieval Jewish gravestones are the first things to catch the eye. The frontispiece is an architectural translation of the relief ‘Jeziory’ (1973) by US artist Frank Stella (1936–2024). Frank Stella’s artwork refers to the village of Jeziory in present-day Belarus with its impressive wooden synagogue, which once stood in hundreds of villages in the Lithuania-Poland region.
Frank Stella
Moshe Verbin, reconstruction of a wooden synagogue
The first special exhibition shows original works of art from Stella’s ‘Polish Village’ series alongside models of the destroyed synagogues. Like the new museum building, these were made of wood. The exhibition will run until January 2027.
The permanent exhibition spans two floors and traces the history of Judaism in Switzerland from Roman antiquity to the present day. The ‘Cult’ chapter highlights the cohesion of Jewish communities. In the ‘Culture’ chapter, topics such as origin, self-determination and survival tell a story that is as unique as it is eventful.
The quest for equality shaped relations with the non-Jewish community, the development of urban communities, anti-Semitism and self-assertion.
In total, the museum presents around 500 objects and many authentic and historical documents from 2000 years of history, from Basel to Riga, from Aleppo to Eilat and from Spain to South America, including around 150 loans and permanent loans from private and institutional collections.
A later article will take a closer look at this museum and the history of Jewish life in Switzerland.
(Source and further information: das Jüdische Museum der Schweiz)
