Basel

Basel sits in the corner where Switzerland, Germany and France meet — you can stand on the Dreiländereck and see all three — and it is the least Swiss-feeling of the big Swiss cities. The Rhine turns north here and becomes navigable, which made the city rich on trade and then on chemistry.

It is also, by some distance, the art capital of Switzerland: nearly forty museums for 180,000 people, the oldest public art collection in the world, and Art Basel every June.

The museums

Kunstmuseum

The Kunstmuseum Basel holds the oldest public art collection anywhere — the city bought the Amerbach cabinet in 1661, making it a municipal collection a century before the Louvre.

The holdings run from Holbein, who worked here, through the Rhine masters to Picasso, and the Picasso story is the one worth knowing: in 1967 the city held a referendum on whether public money should buy two of his paintings. The vote passed, Picasso was so pleased he donated four more, and the works are still on the walls.

Fondation Beyeler

Ten minutes out at Riehen, in a Renzo Piano building set in a park with water lilies outside the Monet room. A dealer’s private collection — Cézanne, Rothko, Giacometti, Bacon — and the best-presented gallery in Switzerland.

And the rest

The Tinguely Museum for kinetic sculpture that clanks and moves; the Antikenmuseum; the Museum der Kulturen; the Cartoon Museum. The Basel Card, given free by hotels at check-in, covers city transport and half-price museum entry.

The old town

The Münster is red sandstone with two towers and a roof of patterned tiles, and the terrace behind it — the Pfalz — drops straight to the Rhine with the best view in the city. Erasmus is buried inside; he spent his last years here and Basel’s university, the oldest in Switzerland, was his reason.

The Marktplatz holds a daily market in front of the Rathaus, which is dark red, covered in frescoes and gold, and looks like a stage set rather than a working seat of government, which it is.

The Rhine

The river is the city’s summer. When it is warm, people finish work, walk upstream, put their clothes into a Wickelfisch — a waterproof fish-shaped dry bag invented here and sold everywhere — and swim back down with the current.

Four small ferries cross the river without engines, pulled across by the current on a cable overhead, exactly as they have been since the 1850s. They cost very little and are the most agreeable ninety seconds in Basel.

Fasnacht

Basel’s carnival is unlike any other in Switzerland, and unlike the ones in Catholic Europe generally: it starts at exactly four in the morning on the Monday after Ash Wednesday, when every light in the city is switched off and thousands of masked pipers and drummers move through the dark streets behind painted lanterns.

It runs for exactly 72 hours. It is on the UNESCO intangible heritage list. If you can be here for it, be here for it.

Getting there

• By train — Zurich to Basel SBB is under an hour, several an hour. Bern is an hour.
• The stations — Basel has a Swiss station, a French one (Basel SNCF, in the same building) and a German one (Basel Badischer Bahnhof, across the river and legally German territory). Check which one your ticket says.
• By air — EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg is shared by three countries and has separate Swiss and French exits. Take the Swiss one unless you mean to go to France.

Nearby

• Germany and France — both are a tram ride; tram 8 goes to Weil am Rhein, where the Vitra Campus has buildings by Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry and Tadao Ando in one field
• Schaffhausen and the Rhine Falls — an hour east along the river
• Lucerne — an hour south

When to go

June for Art Basel, if you want the art world; avoid June if you want a hotel room at a sane price. February or March for Fasnacht. Summer for the river. The city is at its best in warm weather, when it lives outdoors along the Rhine.