Basel

The Münster stands on the hill above the Rhine, where a Roman fort stood before it: a cathedral of red sandstone under a roof of coloured glazed tiles, built between 1019 and 1500 in Romanesque and Gothic forms. The portal of the north transept, the Galluspforte, keeps its Romanesque carvings, and inside lies the tomb of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who died in Basel in 1536. Behind the choir, the Pfalz, a terrace high above the river, looks across to Kleinbasel and the hills of the Black Forest.

Below the Münster hill, Marktplatz is the centre of Grossbasel, and the town hall facing it, the Rathaus, built in the early 16th century, is painted a deep red, with murals on its facade and in its courtyard. From the square, steep lanes climb west up the Spalenberg towards the Spalentor, a 14th-century gate and one of three that survive from the city walls.

The Kunstmuseum's collection has been in public hands since 1661, when the city bought the Amerbach Cabinet, a Basel family's Renaissance collection. It fills three buildings: the main building of 1936 on St. Alban-Graben, the extension of 2016 across the street, linked to it underground, and the Gegenwart building for contemporary art by the river in St. Alban. The old masters centre on Hans Holbein the Younger, who worked in Basel, and his portraits of Erasmus. The modern rooms are strong in Cubism: in 1967 Basel's voters approved public money and its citizens raised the rest to keep two Picassos in the city, and Picasso answered with a gift of four more works.

Upstream on the Kleinbasel bank, in the Solitude park, the Museum Tinguely shows the clattering machine sculptures of Jean Tinguely, who grew up in Basel, in a building by Mario Botta opened in 1996. On the Münsterplatz, the Museum der Kulturen holds one of the largest ethnographic collections in Europe. East of the old town, the St. Alban quarter runs down to the Rhine along a medieval mill canal, and one of its mills now houses the Basel Paper Mill, the Swiss museum of paper, writing and printing.

The Mittlere Brücke crosses from below Marktplatz to Kleinbasel, where a bridge has stood since about 1225; the present stone one dates from 1905. On the Kleinbasel side, the riverside promenade of the Oberer Rheinweg faces the Münster across the water and fills on summer evenings. Four ferries cross the Rhine without engines: each hangs from a cable stretched over the river, and the current pushes it across. Downstream at Kleinhüningen, by the Rhine port, a pylon marks the Dreiländereck, the point in the river where Switzerland, France and Germany meet.

In summer, Basel swims in its river. Swimmers pack their clothes into a Wickelfisch, a waterproof bag shaped like a fish and sold across the city, which floats beside them as they drift downstream with the current; they climb out by one of the stairways along the bank and walk back. Most enter on the Kleinbasel bank near the Museum Tinguely and drift down past the Rheinweg, and on the Grossbasel side two wooden river baths, the Rheinbad Breite upstream and the Rheinbad St. Johann downstream, give a place to change. The Rhine is also a shipping route: barges and passenger boats keep to the middle, and swimmers keep close to the bank.

The Basler Fasnacht begins at 4 a.m. on the Monday after Ash Wednesday, in February or March, and lasts exactly 72 hours. At the Morgestraich the old town's street lights go out as the bells strike four, and the cliques march off to piccolos and drums behind tall lanterns, lit from within and painted with each group's satirical theme of the year. On Monday and Wednesday afternoons the Cortège winds through the centre: masked cliques, Guggenmusik brass bands and floats whose crews throw Räppli (confetti), oranges and sweets into the crowd. During the Fasnacht the lanterns stand on show on the Münsterplatz. The Endstraich ends it at 4 a.m. on Thursday, and the Fasnacht has been on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage since 2017.

Art Basel, founded in the city in 1970, holds its fair every June at the Messe Basel on the Messeplatz in Kleinbasel, where galleries from around the world show modern and contemporary art. Smaller fairs open the same week, among them Liste, for younger galleries, and hotels in Basel and in the towns across both borders fill early.

Basel is the home of Roche and Novartis, and both show on its skyline. On the Kleinbasel bank, upstream from the old town, Roche's two towers rise to 178 and 205 metres, the taller the highest building in Switzerland, both by Herzog & de Meuron, the Basel practice that won the Pritzker Prize in 2001. In the St. Johann district near the French border, the Novartis Campus fills a former factory site with buildings by Frank Gehry, David Chipperfield and others.

The canton of Basel-Stadt reaches beyond the city only to Riehen and Bettingen, and tram 6 runs out to Riehen, where the Fondation Beyeler shows its collection of modern art in a building by Renzo Piano from 1997. Across the German border, where tram 8 ends in Weil am Rhein, the Vitra Campus gathers buildings by Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando and others around the Vitra Design Museum, a short bus ride from Kleinbasel. Tram 3 crosses into France at Saint-Louis, and trains reach Colmar, in the Alsace wine country, in under an hour, where the Musée Unterlinden shows Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece.