Switzerland | Basel

Basel is Switzerland’s third most populated city with over 731,000 in habitants and is also Switzerland’s third largest urban area.

Basel is Switzerland's third most populous city. With 731,000 inhabitants in the tri-national metropolitan area, Basel is Switzerland's third-largest urban area.

Located in northwest Switzerland on the river Rhine, Basel functions as a major industrial centre for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. The city borders both Germany and France. The Basel region, culturally extending into German Baden-Württemberg and French Alsace, reflects the heritage of its three states in the modern Latin name: "Regio TriRhena". Basel is German-speaking. The local variant of the Swiss German dialects is called Basel German.

The red sandstone Münster, one of the foremost late-Romanesque/early Gothic buildings in the Upper Rhine, was badly damaged in the great earthquake of 1356, rebuilt in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, extensively reconstructed in the mid-nineteenth century and further restored in the late twentieth century.[citation needed] A memorial to Erasmus lies inside the Münster.

Basel is also host to an array of buildings by internationally renowned architects, such as the Beyeler Foundation by Renzo Piano, or the Vitra complex in nearby Weil am Rhein, composed of buildings by architects such as Zaha Hadid (fire station), Frank Gehry (design museum), Alvaro Siza Vieira (factory building) and Tadao Ando (conference centre). Basel also features buildings by Mario Botta (Jean Tinguely Museum and Bank of International settlements) and Herzog & de Meuron (whose architectural practice is in Basel, and who are best known as the architects of Tate Modern in London). The city received the Wakker Prize in 1996.

Basels’ main attractions include Ferry trips across the River Rhine, the Stadtcasino concert hall, Scala Theatre and City Zoo, and It has the oldest university of the Swiss Confederation (1460).

Annual events include:

  • Carnival in Basel, March/April
  • Art Basel, June
  • Im Fluss, music festival staged on Basel’s “Rhyviera”, July-August,
  • Em Bebbi sy Jazz, open-air jazz festival, August