This Country's Smallest Museum Is A Window In 600-Year-Old House

Hoosesagg Museeum, which translates into "Pant Pocket Museum" in English, is perhaps the smallest museum in Switzerland - indeed in the world too.

There's no admission fee, but there's also no admission at all, because the entire museum is contained within a two-feet-by-two-feet window covered with an iron grill in the door of a 600-year-old house, located in a narrow pedestrian alley in Basel's Old Town.

Every few months, new items appear in the window at 31 Imbergasslein (Ginger Alley). The Vergeat family has been living in this house for 35 years and have run the museum for 24 years. Many of the displays come from the couple's own assemblage of memorabilia but they welcome outside contributions.

Dagmar, the lady of the house, handles the administrative part of the museum and her husband Matthias takes care of the creative part.

"I am the creative director of this museum and my wife takes care of the administrative part. She is responsible for what has to be displayed. Apart from that she takes care of the promotion of this museum through social media and answers the calls of people from all over the world eager to display their collections. She selects the things and then it's my job to place them in the museum," Matthias told IANS.

Dagmar has been fond of collecting things since her childhood and this is reflected in a room just behind the museum - objects hang from the ceiling and are arranged in display cases; wrist watches surround bottle stoppers with carved faces; there are tea eggs, a spectrum of plastic sunglasses, Rubik's cubes, toy televisions, bells and Dagmar's most favourite collection of kings.