page_title: Basel
section_title: Main sights
hierarchical_section_title: Basel / Culture / Main sights
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Basel BS — Tinguely-Brunnen &#160;Info Camera location47°&#160;33′&#160;16.49″&#160;N, 7°&#160;35′&#160;22.58″&#160;E&#160;&#160;&#160;View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap - Google Earth GPS data may be inaccurate. EXIF data regarding date and time may be inaccurate. This file was uploaded with Commonist. This is an image of a cultural property of national significance in Switzerland with KGS number 1673
context_page_description: Basel or Basle is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine. Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city with about 180,000 inhabitants. The official language of Basel is German, but the main spoken language is the local Basel German dialect.
  Basel is commonly considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland. The city is famous for its many museums, ranging from the Kunstmuseum, the first collection of art accessible to the public in the world and the largest museum of art in Switzerland, to the Fondation Beyeler and the Museum of Contemporary Art, the first public museum of contemporary art in Europe. The University of Basel, Switzerland's oldest university, and the city's centuries-long commitment to humanism, have made Basel a safe haven at times of political unrest in other parts of Europe for such notable people as Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Holbein family, Friedrich Nietzsche, and in the 20th century also Hermann Hesse and Karl Jaspers.
  The city of Basel is Switzerland's second-largest economic centre after the city of Zürich and has the highest GDP per capita in the country, ahead of the cantons of Zug and Geneva.
context_section_description: 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 14th and 15th century, extensively reconstructed in the mid-19th century and further restored in the late 20th century. A memorial to Erasmus lies inside the Münster. The City Hall from the 16th century is located on the Market Square and is decorated with fine murals on the outer walls and on the walls of the inner court.
  Basel is also host to an array of buildings by internationally renowned architects. These include 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), Álvaro 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 and the Bird's Nest in Beijing, the Olympia stadium, which was designed for use throughout the 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics). The city received the Wakker Prize in 1996.
caption: Tinguely's Carnival Fountain (Fasnachtsbrunnen)
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