Basel

Basel: storia e carattere

Basel, founded as the Roman camp Basilia in the 1st century and later a medieval episcopal town, joined the Swiss Confederation in 1501 as the eleventh canton, and became a capital of European humanism with its university (1460), Erasmus and Holbein. Today Switzerland's third city (180,000 residents; 830,000 in the tri-border France-Germany-Switzerland metropolitan area), Basel combines Swiss orderliness with a relaxed Rhine culture: from June to September locals swim in the river floating with their belongings in waterproof Wickelfisch bags, cross from bank to bank on silent cable-driven ferries, and lunch on terraces where dogs are brought a Wassernapf without asking. With 40 museums (the Kunstmuseum, the oldest public art museum in the world; the Fondation Beyeler; the Tinguely), Art Basel every June and architecture signed by Herzog & de Meuron, Mario Botta and Renzo Piano, Basel claims the title of Switzerland's cultural capital. For dogs: Switzerland is part of the EU pet-passport system, two official Hundebadi swim spots line the Rhine, and the canton enforces leash laws strictly in city parks, but the floodplain forests along the Wiese offer kilometres of off-leash freedom.