Skulpturhalle Basel

With around 2,000 casts, it is the largest collection of its kind in the country, due to its tripling in size between 1985 and 2010.

The casts had to be warehoused in 1927 when the national art collection was temporarily moved into the Kunsthalle, creating a need for more space.

In 1940 the cast collection found a provisional home in a disused factory, four years after plans for a new building had failed to pass a referendum; the new building finally materialised in 1963.

When original works are split into pieces across various museums, the casts allow all the parts to be brought back together so that complete reconstructions of antique sculptures can be made.

The unique "Parthenon Project" assembles casts of every surviving sculptural remnant from the Parthenon Temple in Athens, and exhibits them so as to demonstrate their original arrangements.