Basel

Basel is the art city of the region: museums of the first rank, contemporary architecture and, each June, the world’s leading modern and contemporary art fair. It lies less than an hour by train from Zurich and about an hour from Lucerne, with France and Germany at the edge of town.

The Rhine divides Basel in two: Grossbasel on the high left bank, with the red sandstone Münster where Erasmus is buried, and Kleinbasel on the flatter right bank. Small reaction ferries, driven only by the current, cross between them, and in summer the people of Basel swim downstream with their clothes in waterproof bags. The Kunstmuseum Basel holds a collection that began when the city bought the Amerbach Cabinet in 1661, from Holbein to the twentieth century.

Around the old city lies a dense map of museums and architecture. The Fondation Beyeler, in a Renzo Piano building at Riehen on the edge of town, draws visitors from far beyond the region; the Museum Tinguely stands on the Rhine; and across the German border at Weil am Rhein, the Vitra Campus gathers buildings by Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando and the Basel architects Herzog & de Meuron, whose work marks their home city from the Messe to the football stadium.

June belongs to Art Basel, when collectors, galleries and museums from around the world fill the city for a week and its few top hotels are reserved long in advance. The summer that follows is the season of the river, with swimming in the Rhine, open-air bars on the Kleinbasel bank and evenings on the water.

Basler Fasnacht, inscribed by UNESCO as intangible heritage, begins at four in the morning on the Monday after Ash Wednesday with the Morgestraich, when the lights go out and lantern-lit cliques march with fifes and drums; it lasts exactly three days. Autumn brings the Herbstmesse, a fair held since 1471, and December one of the largest Christmas markets in Switzerland, on the Barfüsserplatz and the Münsterplatz.

Basel’s great house is the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois, on the Rhine at the Grossbasel end of the Mittlere Brücke. An inn of the Three Kings is recorded here in 1681, and the present building, designed by Amadeus Merian, opened in 1844; Theodor Herzl stayed during the First Zionist Congress in 1897, and the hotel reopened after a complete renovation in 2006. Its restaurant Cheval Blanc is one of the most respected dining rooms in Switzerland. Across the river in Kleinbasel, the Hotel Krafft, founded in 1873, offers a smaller and more relaxed stay on the riverside promenade.

LVXE books the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois through LHW VITA — at the official hotel rate, with the privileges the programme attaches to the stay. For the Krafft, LVXE advises on the stay and arranges it directly with the hotel. River-view rooms during Art Basel are often committed a year ahead, and the same is true of the Fasnacht nights.