In underrated Basel, big-city cool meets provincial charm
Up to half a million music fans are swarming into Basel for this year's Eurovision Song Contest. The concert venue is in the outskirts and hotel rooms will be hard to come by. Chances are, many fans will simply travel straight in and then straight out again – but if they linger for a little while, they'll be amazed by what they find.
Basel isn't just my favourite Swiss city. It's one of my favourite cities in the whole of Europe, and I never miss a chance to come here. Last year, I came for Art Basel, Europe's biggest art fair. The year before, I came to interview Basel-based Swiss 'starchitects' Herzog & De Meuron (their quirky, eclectic buildings have reshaped Basel's skyline). More than any other European city, it's a place which feels like home.
OK, so I'm a bit biased. Basel was the first foreign city I got to know, back in the long hot summer of 1984. I'd come here with my first girlfriend, on my first Interrail trip. Apart from a couple of day trips to Calais, it was the first time I'd set foot on the Continent.
We thought we'd sleep on night trains and travel all over Europe, but of course that was a daft idea. Sick, tired and disenchanted, we ended up in Basel, where a friend of ours was house-sitting. We spent a week here. It was one of the best weeks of my life. For a long time thereafter I stayed away, scared to return and remember all I'd lost, but during the last decade I've been back half a dozen times, and I'm no longer fearful of those teenage memories. As I arrive at Basel's main station, a solitary visitor in my (very) late fifties, I step off the train into a sea of teenagers, and I realise that to be a lifelong traveller is to become a sort of ghost.
I catch a tram into town and alight in Basel's busy Marktplatz. This is the centre of the city, and it sums up Basel's dual appeal – a bizarre, beguiling blend of metropolis and market town. The imposing buildings would befit a capital, particularly the ornate, blood-red Rathaus (town hall), but the market in the cobbled square feels pleasantly provincial – local traders selling fruit and veg, cheese, sausages and wild mushrooms.
My bedroom in the sleek and stylish Hotel Märthof overlooks the market. From my window I look down on all the people shopping, snacking and gossiping in the square below, as they have done here for centuries. Switzerland is one the world's wealthiest countries, but it's these enduring links with the old ways, the simple things, which makes it special.
Basel is Switzerland's third biggest city, after Zurich and Geneva, but unlike Zurich or Geneva it has no lake, which is why it doesn't attract so many tourists. But Basel has one thing which no other Swiss city has, and that's the mighty River Rhine.
A border and a thoroughfare, Europe's oldest autobahn, this river never fails to lift my spirits, and the view from Basel's robust Mittlerebrücke (literally 'middle bridge') is especially inspiring. This is the oldest bridge across the Rhine and it's the source of all Basel's wealth. On the river's long journey, from the Alps to the North Sea, this is the first point that's navigable for big ships, so it's always been a hub of commerce and culture. I watch the barges chug below, bound for Cologne and Rotterdam.
Blessed with this unique location, Basel became one of Europe's most important inland ports. Like all great ports, it also became a centre of ideas. Erasmus of Rotterdam, the main man of the Northern European Renaissance, fled here from the Low Countries, where his radical philosophy was far too dangerous. He's buried in the Münster, the city's biggest, grandest church, which looms over the river like a lighthouse.
I eat lunch at Ufer7, a debonair yet homely restaurant in a medieval building on the riverbank. The promenade outside is full of youngsters, lounging on the stone steps beside the river – drinking, flirting, basking in the spring sunshine. The last time I was here was five years ago, just as the city was shutting down for Covid. A lot of water has passed under the ancient Mittlerebrücke since then.
I'm joined for coffee by my jolly Swiss guide, Elsa, who takes me on a walking tour of Basel's modern landmarks. Although the antique city centre is charming, with lots of medieval and baroque buildings, nowadays Basel is equally renowned for its contemporary architecture, driven by Herzog & De Meuron, and other local 'starchitects' like Diener & Diener and Christ & Gantenbein.
We head for the Novartis Campus, the biggest concentration of these landmark buildings. A former industrial site, a short walk from the city centre, it's now crowded with glitzy office blocks in a spectacular array of styles. There are buildings by nine Pritzker Prize winners here, including Briton Sir David Chipperfield.
I walk back into town along the river and fill up on schnitzel and rösti at Gifthüttli, a quaint and cosy Swiss restaurant on a backstreet in the Old Town. With wood-panelled walls and draught beer, it's a lively rendezvous for locals, as well as visitors. I shuffle back across the deserted Marktplatz and stagger happily up to bed.
Next morning I'm up bright and early to visit my favourite gallery, Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, a sleepy village on the green edge of town. Founded by local art dealer Ernst Beyeler to house his stunning collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century paintings (all the biggest names in classic modernism, from Monet to Picasso), the building is beautiful, a discreet, sun-drenched pavilion designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. The leafy grounds are equally lovely, a peaceful garden hidden behind a high wall. Switzerland's most popular gallery, it attracts several hundred thousand visitors every year, yet somehow it never feels overrun.
This serene gallery is the starting point for one of my favourite walks. I wander through lush meadows, across a narrow, shallow river, and over the border into Germany (both France and Germany are within walking distance of Basel). I hike uphill through steep vineyards – this borderland produces some superb wines – and down into the German border town of Weil am Rhein.
My destination is the Vitra Museum, built by Herzog & De Meuron (yes, them again) with pavilions by Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid. Part factory, part showroom, its focus is Vitra furniture, but there are also excellent exhibitions devoted to other brands. There's a café and a restaurant, and a neat little garden. If you're interested in design it's fascinating, and a pleasant place to hang out.
As I walk back towards the border, through Weil am Rhein, I remember, with a start, the first time I came here, before the Vitra Museum or the Fondation Beyeler were even built. We were swimming in that river, my girlfriend, my friend and I. I'd cycled back to the house to fetch more wine and crashed my borrowed bike, bending the front wheel beyond repair. As I cross the border, I realise the house was just up the road.
Back in town that evening, wolfing down wild boar sausages and sauerkraut in a friendly neighbourhood restaurant called Taverne Johann, I wonder why I remain so fond of Basel. Naturally, a personal connection always adds something – you probably feel much the same about the place where you first fell in love – but it's not just that which keeps bringing me back.
Sure, it's partly the art and architecture, and the scenery, but most of all it's about being at the crossroads of the Continent, the age-old junction between the Alps and the North Sea. Some places have a certain magic, and Basel is one of them, and its magic is in the Rhine. As my twilit tram clanked across the old stone bridge, I looked down at the dark water, and I remembered a few lines by WH Auden, forgotten since my schooldays:
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
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