I recently spent a few unintended weeks in Basel, Switzerland, due to a family medical emergency. And since visiting hours didn’t begin until 10 am, I was able to do a bit of what I usually do: wander around and look, grabbing images of interesting buildings, monuments and people,
Every morning, I set out visit another part of the city before wandering to the University Hospital for the start of visiting hours. Along the way, I noticed that Basel has more than its share of unusual buildings, unusual mixes of styles, and more than a few hidden secrets.
I’m starting this series off here with three buildings in particular, and a scattering of a few others; these were all chosen because they seemed to me in some way eccentric, a little off the usual.
Like all old cities, Basel shows a mix of styles; many buildings have small inscriptions such as the one above that give away a secret: under the smooth plaster or other modern facade lies a building hundreds of years old. When you’re in the older parts of the city there are a lot of them, but they are often side-by-side with buildings of later eras.
Those styles also give away some of the city’s history by showing the periods when prosperity and growth called for new buildings and could afford to make some of them spectacular, such as the iconic Rathaus, or Town Hall that faces the city’s Market Square.
The Rathaus is unique, though: Although it’s a 16th century building, it’s also a 19th-century building. The original section was built in 1503, but the tower, the added space across the front and the large working building behind it were added after 1875.
The red color is no accident; in German, the town hall is the Rathaus; in Basel Swiss German, it’s the Roothus, which also means Red House. The building wasn’t always that color, but it has been for the past century.
The Hotel des Trois Rois, or Three Kings, has a claim to being Basel’s oldest lodging for travelers; it’s on a site that was already a stopping place for merchants traveling along the Rhine; above Basel the river was then impassible because of rapids. Other buildings followed on the site. In 1844, the present hotel was built after demolishing a 1681 building.
The owner, a tailor named Senn, correctly realized that the coming of steamboats and engineering works to improve navigation on the Rhine and a growing interest in travel would work for his new hotel, arguably the city’s, and maybe Switzerland’s, first grand hotel and first tourist hotel.
Basel is a German-speaking city, although the Swiss dialect is so strong and has so many variant words that some might deny that. Which makes it a bit of a mystery that in 1986 the then owners decided to turn Die Drei Könige into Les Trois Rois. In either language, it’s named for the Magi of the Nativity story, and not, as I thought before I looked up to the statues, for some ancient Swiss or French kings. Just up the the street is a wine bar called The Fourth King…
George G recognized the building as our One-Clue Mystery this week.
Amusing anecdote from Wikipedia: “The composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was awakened by police at six in the morning in his room at the Hotel Les Trois Rois late in 2001; the officers confiscated his passport and disappeared. In 1967, Boulez had given an interview to Der Spiegel in which he said that ‘the opera houses should be blown up.’ The law enforcement officials picked up on it during a routine check of hotel guest registrations.The passport was returned after a few days.“
A fun facade near the Messe, or Congress Hall, has a look of older times, but is actdually a quite recent advertisement for the clothing store that occupies the building. The Congress Hall, whose facade is not only extremely modern, but blocks long, hosts Art Basel and a huge watch-and-clock exhibition that twice a year reduce hotel availability in the city to zero, which is where it was when we arrived.
Having no hotel room seemed an obstacle at first, but after a couple of days I was able to rent a small hospital-owned apartment for most of the stay; living there took me to a neighborhood away from the historic center and gave me a chance at some other wonderful buildings, including my favorite Basel apartment house, on Metzerstrasse.
I truly believe the architect had fun finding ways to mix-and-match, bend-and-blend and create a building with a unique personality.
More central, off Barfusserplatz, is this monumental brewery plus beerhall plus restaurant with lovely lettering over its main entrances.
One of the age clues: These top-floor window structures are rare; many have been removed in renovations, but the buildings they are on are all old. I’ve been told that like the fixtures on Amsterdam merchants’ houses, these were for block and tackle storing merchandise above a home and business. The one below has a different purpose; when it was built it was legal to shadow the path below but not to protrude into it.
And a last of my favorites, the House of Modern Dance, with its inscription “To the Advancement of Dance.” Built near the old Rhine docks at Schifflände in 1908, its carved and cast decoration entwines dancers and letters
Usually, as I travel, I take far too many pictures; or as I like to think of it, just enough pictures that I can find the ones I really want to use. In three weeks of Basel, I’m not sure which version is true, but I have more to come…
