See the only museum of samurai art outside Japan, above a restaurant
Free, upstairs, easy to walk past
Two floors of Japanese armour in low light above a restaurant bar: full suits on stands, helmets in cases, and face masks made to be frightening at close range.
Why it's unique
The Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum holds close to three hundred pieces of samurai armour, helmets, masks, horse armour and weaponry running from the 12th to the 19th century. It is the only museum anywhere outside Japan devoted to the art of the samurai, and the largest collection of its kind outside the country.
The oddity is where it is. This is not a wing of a civic museum but a private collection installed on the first floor above a restaurant, free to walk into, in a district most visitors never reach.
Before you go
It is free and it is upstairs from a restaurant, which is exactly why people walk past the door. Go to the Saint Ann building and take the stairs.
Opening hours are narrow and it is not open every day, so check before crossing town for it. The helmets are the part worth slowing down for: Edo-period armourers built them as rabbits, sea creatures and improbable crests rather than the snarling war masks people arrive expecting, and the wall of them is the single best thing in the building.