MANY art warehouses are so unobtrusive that you can walk by them and never know it. The Geneva Freeport isn’t one of them. A quarter of a mile away, you can see the name of the place, Ports Francs — which is French for free port — in red letters on the outside of a windowless white building facing a commuter thruway. From a distance, it looks like a multiplex movie theater.

Driving up, you expect a checkpoint, armed guards, retina scans, German shepherds and X-ray machines. But none are in sight. There is some fencing and barbed wire, but less than you’d think. This isn’t to say that security here is lax — dealers, movers and collectors describe the place as impregnable, and locks and cameras abound. But nothing about the site says Fort Knox.

Unless you notice the Swiss customs officials, who are not particularly obtrusive, this could pass for a large self-storage operation in Queens. It sits about two miles from the center of Geneva, next to a post office and amid a hodgepodge of gray and unremarkable bridges and streets.

Media tours of the Freeport are rare, but there have been more in recent years as the government and the company that operates the facility strive to reassure the public that there is nothing mysterious or unscrupulous going on here. In part, this is a hangover of some bad publicity. In 2003, Swiss authorities announced that they would return hundreds of antiquities stolen from excavation sites in Egypt, including two mummies, sarcophagi, masks and statues. Some of the items were reportedly painted in garish colors so they could be smuggled in as cheap souvenirs. The ringleader of this group was eventually sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The episode helped to spur some regulatory changes, including a rule that requires tenants to keep an inventory using a specific template. It is hardly a huge change — customs officials were always allowed to ask to see any container they wanted — but experts say the rules were enacted, in part, to counter the Freeport’s undeserved image as a place where anything goes.

“The legislative changes were in response to the criticism,” says Eva Stormann, an attorney based in Geneva who specializes in art law. “But much of that was based on a wrong understanding of how the Freeport works. It is a highly reputable place.”

On a June afternoon, a tour of the Freeport is given by Florence May and Gilbert Epars, marketing directors for Geneva Free Ports. The first stop is a wine cellar piled high with crates stamped with names like Château Mouton Rothschild, Dom Pérignon and Château Petrus.