The Best Places to visit in Basel

Zoo Basel is, with over 1.7 million visitors per year, the most visited tourist attraction in Basel and the second most visited tourist attraction in Switzerland.

Established in 1874, Zoo Basel is the oldest zoo in Switzerland and, by number of animals, the largest. Through its history, Zoo Basel has had several breeding successes, such as the first worldwide Indian rhinoceros birth and Greater flamingo hatch in a zoo. These and other achievements led Forbes Travel to rank Zoo Basel as one of the fifteen best zoos in the world in 2008.

Despite its international fame, Basel’s population remains attached to Zoo Basel, which is entirely surrounded by the city of Basel. Evidence of this is the millions of donations money each year, as well as Zoo Basel’s unofficial name: locals lovingly call “their” zoo “Zolli” by which is it known throughout Basel and most of Switzerland.

Museums

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. 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)
• 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-Europeancultural 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
• Spielzeug Welten Museum – a museum houring the largest teddy bear collection in Europe.
• 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
• Vitra Design Museum Museum in Weil am Rhein near Basel