Skip to content
Mixroutes
Basel
City in Switzerland

Basel

Basel is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine, at the transition from the High Rhine to the Upper Rhine.

Plan a trip to Basel→From Strasbourg

Basel is Switzerland's third most populous city, with 177,595 inhabitants within the city municipality limits.

Get in

Getting to Basel

If you enter Basel from France, remember the name is spelled "Bâle" in French. You may not find "Basel" on maps. The best airports for Basel are the city's own EuroAirport, 4 km away, or Zurich airport 90 min away by train. Other options are Geneva, with excellent flight connections but 3 hours away by change of train, and Bern (1 hr) and Strasbourg (90 min) which have fewer flights.

  1. 01
    EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg
  2. 02
    Basel SBB about 1 km south

    Within Switzerland, SBB trains take just under an hour to Zurich and Bern, two per hour; there are good connections across the entire country.

  3. 03
    Basel Badischer Bahnhof
See

Worth seeing

Basel Old Town is a compact, walkable area bounded to the north by the Rhine and to the south by the Zoo and SBB main railway station. There are many museums, some with a free opening hour at the end of the day.

  1. 01
    Basler Münster

    Now a Reformed Protestant cathedral, it was built from 1019, badly damaged in an earthquake of 1356, and completed in 1500 in Romanesque & Gothic style.

  2. 02
    Elisabethenkirche

    Elisabethenstrasse 14 (T-jcn with Henric Petri Strasse).

  3. 03
    Kunstmuseum Basel

    Huge permanent collection of 19th and 20th century works, including a whole room of Picasso, and medieval and renaissance paintings from Holbein, Grien and others.

  4. 04
    Kunsthalle Basel

    No permanent collection, this is Basel's main non-commercial art space for changing contemporary art shows.

  5. 05
    Museum der Kulturen

    Ethnographic museum featuring exhibits from South America, Africa, East Asia and Oceania.

  6. 06
    Antikenmuseum Basel
Do

Things to do

Basel is one of the major cities in Switzerland and offer all activities of an urban centre. Most popular is the Basel Carnival but the Basel ferry is the icon. Basel ferry (behind Münster). The Basel Rhine ferry is an icon of the city and a visit to Basel without a ride on a ferry would be incomplete. It only takes two-three minutes but it offers a great view (during sunshine). The Third Man. Chase The Third Man?

Eat

Where to eat

Basel has a thriving restaurant and café (see below Cafés) culture, and the streets of the old town are lined with outdoor seating in the summer. Not all restaurants in Basel accept credit cards (though an increasing number do). If in doubt check first. As in most of Europe, tipping is not a requirement.

  1. 01
    Brötlibar

    The Brötli-Bar at the Stadthof Hotel, Barfüsserplatz, has a large selection of open sandwiches ("Brötli" to the Swiss).

  2. 02
    Hirscheneck

    Traditional left-wing, punk-run restaurant.

  3. 03
    Migros
  4. 04
    Lily's Maxim

    "Pan-Asian" bench table restaurant (like Wagamama but with more than noodles).

  5. 05
    SAM'S Pizza Land

    Has a take away counter which serves filling Turkish wraps and pizzas for around Fr.

How locals move

Getting around Basel the local way

  • Get inBut these are scenic cruises taking 8 days to tour the cities along the way; they're not point-to-point ferries.
  • Get aroundYou can be carried across the Rhine by Fähri, one of Basel's four small ferry boats, which, hanging at a steel rope, are silently drawn by the current between the two banks of the river.
  • Go nextThe following destinations are good day trips by train from Basel: Zürich, Bern, Interlaken (see below), Lucerne (see below), Schaffhausen — all in Switzerland, 1–2 hours from the main station (Bahnhof SBB).

From Wikivoyage: Basel, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-09.

Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.