10 must-see museums in and around Basel

Basel is a beautiful city located on the Rhine River in the north-western part of Switzerland. It is situated close to France and Germany, and there is actually a point where the borders of the three countries—Switzerland, France and Germany—meet. This ‘tripoint’ is marked by the monument Dreiländereck, a popular tourist attraction. It is an interesting experience for many tourists to find themselves suddenly in France or Germany in just a few minutes of driving or cruising on the Rhine. Such close association with two other countries predictably meant that the city has absorbed different facets of their culture, which have been amalgamated into a unique Basel culture. It is also distinctive as the city has combined medieval, traditional, modern, cosmopolitan and cross-cultural threads into a seamless whole. Its history goes back at least 2000 years to the Celts who were followed by the Romans, and its association with the Swiss Confederacy later. Basel’s reputation as an academic and cultural city started in the middle ages and has continued unabated, earning it the tag of the cultural capital of Switzerland. True to this reputation, Basel is the city of museums and is home to some 40 of them. But the unique thing, apart from spectacular art museums, is that it has many unusual, quirky and adorable ones as well. From a church museum with rare scrolls to a museum filled with dolls, from a cartoon museum to one of moving artworks, there’s something for every kind of traveller here. Following are some of the popular museums in and around Basel that you shouldn’t miss: