page_title: Basel
section_title: Museums
hierarchical_section_title: Basel / Culture / Museums
caption_attribution_description: English: Basel: Museum of Art Deutsch: Basel: Kunstmuseum Basel
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 Basel museums cover a broad and diverse spectrum of collections with a marked concentration in the fine arts. They house numerous holdings of international significance. The over three dozen institutions yield an extraordinarily high density of museums compared to other cities of similar size and draw over one million visitors annually.
  Constituting an essential component of Basel culture and cultural policy, the museums are the result of closely interwoven private and public collecting activities and promotion of arts and culture going back to the 16th century. The public museum collection was first created back in 1661 and represents the oldest public collection in continuous existence in Europa. Since the late 1980s, various private collections have been made accessible to the public in new purpose-built structures that have been recognized as acclaimed examples of avant-garde museum architecture.
  Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig Ancient cultures of the mediterranean museum
  Augusta Raurica Roman open-air museum
  Basel Paper Mill (German: Basler Papiermühle)
  Beyeler Foundation (Foundation Beyeler) Beyeler Museum (Fondation Beyeler)
  Botanical Garden Basel One of the oldest botanical gardens in the world
  Caricature & Cartoon Museum Basel (German: Karikatur & Cartoon Museum Basel)
  Dollhouse Museum (German: Puppenhausmuseum) a museum housing the largest teddy bear collection in Europe.
  Foundation Fernet Branca (French: Fondation Fernet Branca) in Saint-Louis, Haut-Rhin near Basel. Modern art collection.
  Historical Museum Basel (German: Historisches Museum Basel)
  Kunsthalle Basel Modern and contemporary art museum
  Kunstmuseum Basel Upper Rhenish and Flemish paintings, drawings from 1400 to 1600 and 19th- to 21st-century art
  Monteverdi Automuseum
  Museum of Cultures Basel (German: Museum der Kulturen Basel) Large collections on European and non-European cultural life
  Museum of Contemporary Art Art from the 1960s up to the present
  Music Museum (German: Musikmuseum) of the Basel Historic Museum
  Natural History Museum of Basel (German: Naturhistorisches Museum Basel)
  Pharmazie-Historisches Museum der Universität Basel
  Schaulager Modern and contemporary art museum
  Swiss Architecture Museum (German: Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum)
  Tinguely Museum Life and work of the major Swiss iron sculptor Jean Tinguely
  Jewish Museum of Switzerland
caption: The Kunstmuseum Basel, oldest public museum of art in Europe
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