SWITZERLAND | Basel during Herbstmesse

Posted by Timothy on September 17, 2023September 17, 2023

October 2022. As we wanted to test Trenitalia‘s Frecciarossa 1000 service from Paris to Milan, we planned a rail trip around it. From Antwerp to Paris with Thalys, the ‘Red Arrow’ to Milan and once in Italy continuing to Trieste and Bologna. The return trip took us to Basel in Switzerland to enjoy SBB‘s panoramic coach and Germany‘s Rhine route to Cologne. From there we got back to Belgium.

Basel is a German-speaking city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine. It is a main entry point into Switzerland from France and from Germany. Basel is Switzerland’s third-most-populous city, after Zurich and Geneva, with about 175,000 inhabitants.

Basel is commonly considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland and the city is famous for its many museums, including the Kunstmuseum, which is the first collection of art accessible to the public in the world (1661) and the largest museum of art in Switzerland, the Fondation Beyeler, located in Riehen, the Museum Tinguely and the Museum of Contemporary Art, which is the first public museum of contemporary art in Europe.

Forty museums are spread throughout the city-canton, making Basel one of the largest cultural centres in relation to its size and population in Europe.

The University of Basel, Switzerland’s oldest university (founded in 1460), and the city’s centuries-long commitment to humanism, have made Basel a safe haven at times of political unrest in other parts of Europe for such notable people as Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Holbein family, Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, and in the 20th century also Hermann Hesse and Karl Jaspers.

Basel was the seat of a Prince-Bishopric starting in the 11th century, and joined the Swiss Confederacy in 1501. The city has been a commercial hub and an important cultural centre since the Renaissance, and has emerged as a centre for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries in the 20th century.

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Herbstmesse

We were in Basel during Basler Herbstmesse or Basel Autumn Fair.

The tradition of this fair goes back to the Middle Ages. In 1471 Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III gave Basel the privilege of holding two large trade fairs every year, one before Pentecost and one in the autumn before St. Martin’s Day. While the spring fair only lasted for a short time, the autumn fair has continued without interruption to this day. This makes it the oldest fair in Switzerland and also the largest between Stuttgart and Milan.

The Basel Autumn Fair has taken place almost every year since 1471. In 1721 and 1722 it was canceled because of the plague, and in 1831 it had to be canceled because of a cholera epidemic. In 1918 it did not take place because of the Spanish flu, and in 2020 the Basel Autumn Fair was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A fair with a long history and with many traditions attracts huge crowds to the city. Crowds Danny and I love to avoid.

There are fairgrounds on seven locations in Basel, including at Messe Basel, the city’s congress and event space. And guess where our hotel, the Hyperion, was? There! But luckily the hotel had good soundproofing.

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Tram tour

Danny had found that taking tram 15, which becomes tram 16 at is terminus and combined loops back to Messe, would provide of us pf a scenic tour of Basel. It did. It was a time efficient way to see the sights of Basel and crossing the Rhine.

On Sunday we had a couple of hours to kill before out train to Cologne, but not enough time for a museum. So we went to the city centre and had a little walk.