Beyeler Museum in Basel, Switzerland is small but terrific

Composition No. 11, Piet Mondrian, 1913; when I visited, the museum had a temporary exhibition marking the 150th birthday of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian showing his evolution to the rectilinear paintings with primary colors for which he is famous

Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Armchair, Paul Cezanne, 1890; Basel has the oldest civic museum collection in the world (1661); Basel is considered the cultural capital of Switzerland with its museums drawing millions of visitors annually

The Mandolin Player, Pablo Picasso, 1911; Basel, which lies where Switzerland borders France and Germany, is among my all-time favorite cities and is, of course, the hometown of Roger Federer; the city is the third largest in Switzerland after Zurich and Geneva

Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (Morning), Claude Monet, 1894; Ernst Beyeler was 'Europe’s pre-eminent dealer in modern art', according to The NY Times, and 'the greatest art dealer since the war', according to The Daily Telegraph

Wheatfield with Cornflowers, Vincent van Gogh, 1890; the Rhine curves through Basel, dividing the city into two parts-on the south and west bank is the city’s medieval old town while across the river is Kleinbasel, a newer section with an active nightlife

Untitled, Jackson Pollock, 1949; Basel’s international airport, only 2.1 miles from town, is actually located in France; the airport is officially named the EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg for the nearest Swiss, French and German cities

Famyard at Duivendrecht, Piet Mondrian, 1916; my favorite of Mondrian's early works; the Beyeler Foundation is the most visited museum of art in all of Switzerland, featuring the collection of Ernst and Hildy Beyeler in a gorgeous Renzo Piano-designed museum

Passage du Commerce-Saint-André, Balthus, 1954; Ernst Beyelen was one of the founders of Art Basel, the world’s premier fair for contemporary art; started in 1970, Art Basel attracts 100,000+ visitors, 4000 artists and has now expanded to Miami and Hong Kong

Composition with Large Flat Red, Black, Yellow, Gray and Blue, Piet Mondrian, 1921; admission to the museum was roughly $28 but the relatively small museum has great temporary exhibitions and many 20th century masterpieces

The train from Colmar, France to Basel took roughly an hour and then the tram from Basel's station to the museum took another 15 minutes but I still arrived before the museum opened; across the street was a great shop devoted to the work of Claire Ochsner

Landscape with Red Roof, Paul Gauguin, 1885; there are 40 museums in the metro area, making Basel one of the largest cultural centers in relation to its population in Europe; the Beyeler collection was valued at $1.85 billion when Ernst died in 2010

Water Lilies, Claude Monet, 1919; some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies — such as Novartis and Hoffman-La Roche — have their global headquarters in Basel; surprisingly, the second most common language here is Italian rather than French