Some days call for a roof and something to look at. These are museums that hold a kid's attention: dinosaur bones, castle armor, science you can try with your hands, and exhibits made for children. Some are in the city, others a short train ride out, so a museum morning can double as a day trip.
Kyburg is a medieval castle that has been a museum for about 160 years. Inside the Grafenhaus and Ritterhaus, kids find suits of armor, a wooden block prison from 1529, room models with one hidden object that doesn't belong, and six short cartoons on the castle's story.
On the third floor, a castle building site lets them clamp stones, date beams by tree rings and build with wooden blocks.
The Swiss Children's Museum fills an 1896 villa with 300 years of childhood and toys. Kids test spinning tops of wood, tin and plastic, build with construction toys from different centuries and stage shows at small puppet theaters.
Upstairs are five-senses experiments, a mirror room and a children's library. Historic classrooms play pupils' stories at old school desks.
Sauriermuseum Aathal shows real dinosaur skeletons, six of them from the museum's own digs, alongside trilobites, a crocodile, flying and marine reptiles, 290 pieces of amber and 108 meteorites. Replicas and models fill in the rest of the age of dinosaurs.
Outside, the DinoGiardino garden has dinosaur models, a dig pit, a slide, a small carousel for toddlers, two grill spots and covered picnic tables.
Technorama is a hands-on science center where most exhibits are built to touch and try. Kids spin tops and pendulums in Mechanikum, kick and crank wooden marble runs, play with magnets and currents, and build machines from everyday materials in Tinkering.
Staffed labs let kids run their own chemistry, physics and biology experiments, and an outdoor park opens from late March to late October.
The museum sits next to the historic Lindt factory, where chocolate has been made since 1899. A 9.3-meter fountain holding 1,400 kg of chocolate greets visitors as they arrive.
The audio-guided route follows cocoa from farms in Ghana to the Swiss chocolate pioneers, with tasting stations along the way and a pilot plant showing how bars are made. Kids get an audio tour of their own.
This is the main building of the Zurich University of the Arts' museum of design and visual communication. Changing exhibitions cover graphic design, posters and textiles, and many include a hands-on station where kids can experiment and make things.
There is also an education studio, the Swiss Design Lounge, a café and a design shop.
Mühlerama is a museum of food culture inside the Tiefenbrunnen industrial mill from 1913, which still runs. Each afternoon a bell rings and the miller shows how the mill makes flour.
Kids grind wheat on several mills, including a stone grinder from the pile-dwelling era, then bake a roll from their flour in the baking workshop. A flour-mystery trail, a talking-house audio play and four mill models fill the floors.
Kulturama tells the story of life over 600 million years, through fossils, skeletons, hand axes and mummies. A second strand follows the human body from conception to death, showing how it works and changes.
Much of it is hands-on: kids can touch a mammoth's tooth, compare a shrew's heartbeat with their own, and try listening stations, computers and experiments. Special exhibitions pick one theme about human life.
NONAM is the City of Zurich's museum of Native American, First Nations and Inuit cultures. The collection route leads through six regions, from the Plains and the Arctic to the Northwest Coast and the US Southwest. A gallery shows works by Zurich painter Karl Bodmer, and special exhibitions look at contemporary Indigenous art and life.
The program includes family afternoons, workshops and holiday activities for kids.
The museum fills the 1893 Burgwies depot, the city's oldest surviving tram depot, with original trams from 1897 to 1968. Kids can climb inside most of them, look at a tram from underneath, and see the motor through a glass floor.
For younger kids there's Cobralino, a pedal-powered tram they drive themselves, plus a big wooden railway, a model layout where kids run the trams, and a tram-sound piano.
Museum Rietberg holds art from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, some 32,600 objects, most of them on show in the galleries or the open storeroom. It spreads across historic villas in Rieterpark and an underground extension entered through a glass pavilion called the Emerald.
Kids can roam the park between buildings, and on Sundays the Open Workshop has families making their own pieces inspired by the collection.
focusTerra is the Earth and Science Discovery Center of ETH Zurich, set in a three-floor exhibition tower inside the university's NO building. The floors cover how the Earth moves, the treasures it holds and the history stored in its rocks.
Kids can try interactive exhibits and look at the Omniglobe, the Indergand Crystal, minerals, meteorites, fossils and historical reliefs of the Alps.
Opened in March 2024, the museum brings the university's zoology, paleontology, botany and anthropology collections under one roof, with more than 1,500 animals and fossils on show. A touchable, life-size Plateosaurus greets kids at the entrance, and the dinosaur rooms add tactile reconstructions.
Other rooms cover Swiss wildlife, fossils from Monte San Giorgio, Ice Age life with the Neanderthal Orsa, and how plants communicate. A cinema runs nature films.
A football museum on three floors, right by Bahnhof Enge. Kids stand next to the original FIFA World Cup Trophy, walk along a 35-meter rainbow of national-team shirts from all 211 FIFA member associations, and watch World Cup finals footage on a 180-degree cinema screen.
The visit ends at a giant pinball where kids test their ball skills in five games and chase a spot on the leaderboard.
Kunsthaus Zürich is Switzerland's largest art museum by area, spread across Karl Moser's 1910 building and David Chipperfield's sandstone extension, linked by a passage under Heimplatz. The collection runs from the Middle Ages to today, with Monet's huge water lilies, Giacometti sculptures and Swiss painters like Hodler.
Children get their own free audio guide: wherever a penguin marks a work, it tells stories and sets riddles about it.
The Swiss National Museum fills a turreted 1898 building, styled like a French Renaissance chateau, beside the Platzspitz park. Its galleries run from prehistory to the 21st century, with a section on knights, an Armoury Tower and a diorama of the Battle of Murten.
The family exhibition has three themed rooms (an Oriental Palace, a sailing ship and a railway) where kids solve puzzles, dress up and listen to stories.
Some days call for a roof and something to look at. These are museums that hold a kid's attention: dinosaur bones, castle armor, science you can try with your hands, and exhibits made for children. Some are in the city, others a short train ride out, so a museum morning can double as a day trip.
Kyburg is a medieval castle that has been a museum for about 160 years. Inside the Grafenhaus and Ritterhaus, kids find suits of armor, a wooden block prison from 1529, room models with one hidden object that doesn't belong, and six short cartoons on the castle's story.
On the third floor, a castle building site lets them clamp stones, date beams by tree rings and build with wooden blocks.
The Swiss Children's Museum fills an 1896 villa with 300 years of childhood and toys. Kids test spinning tops of wood, tin and plastic, build with construction toys from different centuries and stage shows at small puppet theaters.
Upstairs are five-senses experiments, a mirror room and a children's library. Historic classrooms play pupils' stories at old school desks.
Sauriermuseum Aathal shows real dinosaur skeletons, six of them from the museum's own digs, alongside trilobites, a crocodile, flying and marine reptiles, 290 pieces of amber and 108 meteorites. Replicas and models fill in the rest of the age of dinosaurs.
Outside, the DinoGiardino garden has dinosaur models, a dig pit, a slide, a small carousel for toddlers, two grill spots and covered picnic tables.
Technorama is a hands-on science center where most exhibits are built to touch and try. Kids spin tops and pendulums in Mechanikum, kick and crank wooden marble runs, play with magnets and currents, and build machines from everyday materials in Tinkering.
Staffed labs let kids run their own chemistry, physics and biology experiments, and an outdoor park opens from late March to late October.
The museum sits next to the historic Lindt factory, where chocolate has been made since 1899. A 9.3-meter fountain holding 1,400 kg of chocolate greets visitors as they arrive.
The audio-guided route follows cocoa from farms in Ghana to the Swiss chocolate pioneers, with tasting stations along the way and a pilot plant showing how bars are made. Kids get an audio tour of their own.
This is the main building of the Zurich University of the Arts' museum of design and visual communication. Changing exhibitions cover graphic design, posters and textiles, and many include a hands-on station where kids can experiment and make things.
There is also an education studio, the Swiss Design Lounge, a café and a design shop.
Mühlerama is a museum of food culture inside the Tiefenbrunnen industrial mill from 1913, which still runs. Each afternoon a bell rings and the miller shows how the mill makes flour.
Kids grind wheat on several mills, including a stone grinder from the pile-dwelling era, then bake a roll from their flour in the baking workshop. A flour-mystery trail, a talking-house audio play and four mill models fill the floors.
Kulturama tells the story of life over 600 million years, through fossils, skeletons, hand axes and mummies. A second strand follows the human body from conception to death, showing how it works and changes.
Much of it is hands-on: kids can touch a mammoth's tooth, compare a shrew's heartbeat with their own, and try listening stations, computers and experiments. Special exhibitions pick one theme about human life.
NONAM is the City of Zurich's museum of Native American, First Nations and Inuit cultures. The collection route leads through six regions, from the Plains and the Arctic to the Northwest Coast and the US Southwest. A gallery shows works by Zurich painter Karl Bodmer, and special exhibitions look at contemporary Indigenous art and life.
The program includes family afternoons, workshops and holiday activities for kids.
The museum fills the 1893 Burgwies depot, the city's oldest surviving tram depot, with original trams from 1897 to 1968. Kids can climb inside most of them, look at a tram from underneath, and see the motor through a glass floor.
For younger kids there's Cobralino, a pedal-powered tram they drive themselves, plus a big wooden railway, a model layout where kids run the trams, and a tram-sound piano.
Museum Rietberg holds art from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, some 32,600 objects, most of them on show in the galleries or the open storeroom. It spreads across historic villas in Rieterpark and an underground extension entered through a glass pavilion called the Emerald.
Kids can roam the park between buildings, and on Sundays the Open Workshop has families making their own pieces inspired by the collection.
focusTerra is the Earth and Science Discovery Center of ETH Zurich, set in a three-floor exhibition tower inside the university's NO building. The floors cover how the Earth moves, the treasures it holds and the history stored in its rocks.
Kids can try interactive exhibits and look at the Omniglobe, the Indergand Crystal, minerals, meteorites, fossils and historical reliefs of the Alps.
Opened in March 2024, the museum brings the university's zoology, paleontology, botany and anthropology collections under one roof, with more than 1,500 animals and fossils on show. A touchable, life-size Plateosaurus greets kids at the entrance, and the dinosaur rooms add tactile reconstructions.
Other rooms cover Swiss wildlife, fossils from Monte San Giorgio, Ice Age life with the Neanderthal Orsa, and how plants communicate. A cinema runs nature films.
A football museum on three floors, right by Bahnhof Enge. Kids stand next to the original FIFA World Cup Trophy, walk along a 35-meter rainbow of national-team shirts from all 211 FIFA member associations, and watch World Cup finals footage on a 180-degree cinema screen.
The visit ends at a giant pinball where kids test their ball skills in five games and chase a spot on the leaderboard.
Kunsthaus Zürich is Switzerland's largest art museum by area, spread across Karl Moser's 1910 building and David Chipperfield's sandstone extension, linked by a passage under Heimplatz. The collection runs from the Middle Ages to today, with Monet's huge water lilies, Giacometti sculptures and Swiss painters like Hodler.
Children get their own free audio guide: wherever a penguin marks a work, it tells stories and sets riddles about it.
The Swiss National Museum fills a turreted 1898 building, styled like a French Renaissance chateau, beside the Platzspitz park. Its galleries run from prehistory to the 21st century, with a section on knights, an Armoury Tower and a diorama of the Battle of Murten.
The family exhibition has three themed rooms (an Oriental Palace, a sailing ship and a railway) where kids solve puzzles, dress up and listen to stories.
