City of Art • Basel (861 km)

(Basel, 02.06.2025-04.06.2025) Basel advertises itself with the slogan “City of Art, Exciting, Full of Contrasts, on the Rhine”. I agree and my visit to the Tinguely Museum illustrates this. Do you remember the photos of my first Footprint from the Völklinger Hütte? For Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in May, the Völklingen Ironworks would certainly have been an inspiration and an inexhaustible store of materials.

Basel also has outstanding significance for Judaism. The first Zionist World Congress was held here in the Stadtcasino Basel under the chairmanship of Theodor Herzl, who formulated the “Basel Program”, which envisaged the creation of a home in Palestine for Jews from all over the world, secured by public law. The trial of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was held here and the public verdict exposed it as a forgery once and for all. Here is the Jewish Museum of Switzerland, which opened in 1966 as the first Jewish museum in the German-speaking world after the war; it is currently closed as it is being given a new location at Vesalgasse 5, 4051 Basel.