Build the day backwards, from whatever is hanging.
A museum city on the Rhine, where Switzerland, Germany and France meet.
Plan Basel backwards. Decide first which exhibition is worth the drive, then build the hours around the moment you want to be standing in front of it, because in a city holding this much art the usual mistake is to attempt everything and to remember none of it. The Rhine runs through the middle of it, the old town sits above the water on one bank, and the German and French borders are close enough that a tram will take you over either one.
- Duration
- A full day, weighted toward the afternoon, since a morning drive lands you in the galleries at the right hour.
- Pickup
- From your hotel in Zurich, north west along the Rhine, with your private driver staying with you for the museums outside town.
- Group size
- Your household only, which matters here more than usual, because looking at pictures with strangers on a timetable is not looking at pictures.
- Season
- An indoor day that works in any month, and a city that is a different proposition entirely during the June art week.
Basel is a small city carrying a collection that would flatter a capital, and it has been at this for a very long time: the Kunstmuseum grew out of what is generally held to be the oldest public art collection in the world, assembled by the city rather than by a prince. That inheritance shows in the way the place behaves. Nothing about it is loud, the museums are spread out instead of stacked into one district, and the sensible day is two of them properly rather than five of them at walking speed.
Written about this day
Basel is the art entry among the day trips from Zurich, and the December version of the same city, when the squares fill with market stalls, is covered under the Christmas market evenings.