Next month, the Swiss city of Basel plays host to the Eurovision Song Contest. For those who don’t work in fine art, luxury watches or pharmaceuticals, the medieval city is probably an unknown — or perhaps, for Eurovision fans, little more than an expensive necessity.
Basel, however, is full of surprises: it is staking a claim as the bar capital of Switzerland, with an unbeatable outdoor riverside culture you won’t find easily matched anywhere else in central Europe. There’s plenty to pack in over a weekend visit.
Visitors shouldn’t have much trouble finding their way around this compact city. The old town is a short walk from the main train station and forms a rough semi-circle set against the Rhine. Rising high above the river is the minster, a collection of cobblestone alleys and the main shopping thoroughfare, Freie Strasse. During the day, the old town is fine for shopping and eating — standard warnings about tourist traps apply — but tends to empty out in the evening.
Directly across the river is the district of Kleinbasel (Lesser Basel), the old workers’ and immigrants’ quarter, and as such, the most interesting part of the city. The Eurovision village is located here, in the complex of towers and halls of the Basel exhibition centre (the Messe).
Suggested itinerary
Friday
Check into your hotel
I recently stayed in Nomad: a compact, modern design hotel in the old town. It is full of neat design choices, with a clever use of materials and wood to give comfort and interest to its blocky, concrete aesthetic. Unlike many other design hotels, “modern” here is not a synonym for irritating hidden corner-cutting exercises, like irregular housekeeping or lack of amenities. Nomad has all the standard hotel perks, and is full of smart, expensive touches and extras to make the heart gladden: free Nespresso coffee and tisanes outside my room, rather than the horrid granule tubes and sad little sachets of ancient tea you might normally expect. L’Occitane bathroom bits. Super comfortable bedding. Plenty of space to work. (Double rooms from SFr205/$250/£187.) Nomad is the sibling hotel of Krafft, another design-forward establishment across the river, with a pedigree reaching back to 1873.
A Germanic martini . . . of sorts
Appropriately enough for a city whose fortune was based on the chemical industry, Basel has a fantastic selection of bars — a number of which have late operating hours.
There’s an official association of Basel gastro and nightlife professionals, called Basel BarTender, which handily produces a pocket guide to the best spots in the city. It’s only available in German, but pictures and opening hours are easy enough to understand and it’s certainly better than using Google (which, as in many places in Europe outside capital cities, doesn’t work particularly well here for finding anywhere half decent). If you don’t find a physical copy of the bar guide, you can download a PDF online.
For cocktails on Friday evening, I headed straight to the Herz bar in Kleinbasel, a multiple award-winning drinks venue — it was named Swiss bar of the year in 2024 and 2025, and for good reason. There is an inventive and extensive selection of cocktails that could rival those of top bars in London or New York. The house speciality is the Briny Drip, which in my cocktail philistinism I can only best describe as a bit like a dirty martini, German-style: a local wheat brandy replaces the gin, with sauerkraut cordial and verjus for brininess and tang, a little calvados for sweetness and a small caviar spoon of pickled mustard seeds for interest. A perfect aperitif.
Dinner fit for three kings
If time and wallet allow, then the classic dinner joint of choice is the Brasserie in the Grand Hôtel Les Trois Rois. Allegedly good enough for Nietzsche and his poisonous sister Elisabeth, good enough for fans of Eurovision 2024 winner Nemo. (Or, like me, of Verka Serduchka).
If you’re not a regular visitor to Switzerland, the Trois Rois offers a good introduction as to why this country is such a success story, one in which the Belle Époque culture of les grands hôtels didn’t die, but just got a chic paint job. Not flashy. Just right.
Here, the usual stations of the French culinary cross apply: médaillons de veau, crêpes suzette, et al. While countless brasseries run off this kind of fare and the boredom in the kitchen shows on the plate, it’s nice to eat something as simple as a steak with café de Paris butter or a sole meunière that has been prepared by a chef with a level of attention suggesting they invented them.
Service is impeccable too, and the atmosphere is friendly and convivial, not hushed and formal. When I was there, the table next to me — celebrating who knows what — had a giant cake brought out for dessert in the shape of a Swissair A320. In 3D. Complete with winglets. Everyone cheered.
After dinner, a drink in the hotel’s beautiful bar is a bonus.
However, if you’re in town for Eurovision or a short stay, you might not have time for a long sit-down meal, and Basel has plenty of other simpatico, less financially depleting alternatives. From spring to autumn, the city’s buvettes — pop-up outdoor cafés — are perfect for grabbing drinks and a meal, weather permitting. Most are found along the river in Kleinbasel. Saint Louis Buvette on the old town side of the river does excellent Fischknusperli, Switzerland’s version of fish and chips made with the catch from the Rhine.
Walther Buvette, not far from the Eurovision village, has a great selection of pinsa romana. Or if you’re so minded, head to Oetlinger Buvette a little further along the river, where there’s a public barbecue — you can bring your own stuff to grill.
Saturday
Swimming
If there’s one thing every visitor should remember to bring to Basel, it’s their swimming costume.
QED: for me, the first task of a full day here is a dip in one of the city fountains. You might think this mad or weird, but honestly, no Basler will bat an eyelid. In the warmer months of the year, this is a local tradition: every fountain in town is open for people to take a quick dip in. From my hotel, it was only a two-minute walk to the nearest: a large basin just outside the Basel Art Museum. There was just one bather in it when I visited, but this was March, and the sun, although out, wasn’t exactly baking hot.
If in doubt on where to dip, check out the list on the Basel tourism website. Think of them as Jacuzzis in the middle of the city, it says. That couldn’t be clearer, then.
Refreshed, I went back for an excellent breakfast at my hotel. On Sundays, it evolves into a brunch spot favoured by the young and creative of Basel from 11am on: it’s packed, and there’s live music. A pretty good reason to idle there with a hangover-blitzing Bloody Mary, even if you’re not staying here. (Live music, it turns out, is really a thing in a lot of Basel venues.)
Art
Basel is home to some of the world’s greatest art collections, which even if only for an hour, are worth squeezing in. I had three in mind on my visit. The Fondation Beyeler, a short tram ride out of town and set in its own Zen-like gardens, currently has a superlative exhibition of paintings of the high north — a luminous, border-crossing tour de force from Munch to the Canadian Group of Seven — for anyone seeking calm after a night of carousing.
In the centre of town, the Kunstmuseum has an era-spanning collection of works and is always worth a wander around. And for something more fun, try the Museum Tinguely, home to a collection of dadaist, mechanical works by the celebrated Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely, as well as exhibitions of other contemporary — often quite radical — artists.
Architecture
If you prefer to avoid museums, then Basel can also deliver cultural interest thanks to its world class contemporary architecture. Local practice Herzog & de Meuron is practically the city’s in-house firm for any new major commission. But Basel is also home to constructions by 12 other Pritzker-winning architects (local Peter Zumthor designed the extension to the Fondation Beyeler building).
In Swiss style, many of these buildings are discreet but sleekly elegant, and worth seeking out for design enthusiasts. The Swiss Architecture Museum, in the old town, organises regular walking tours of the best. The Eurovision concert venue itself, the St Jakobshalle, is an interesting building — an airy piece of 1970s brutalism by local son Giovanni Panozzo, a graduate of the Bauhaus in Dessau.
Rhine time
Culture ticked off, it’s time for another swim and some sunbathing. This time in the river itself. Although the Rhine is a major transport route, the water in Basel is pristine and all along its banks are swimming spots where locals congregate in numbers whenever the sun peeps out.
Highly recommended (and available for borrowing or purchase from the tourist office) is a waterproof Wickelfisch bag. Put your belongings into it, tether it to your wrist and drift at leisure.
My recommendation for something you can’t do anywhere else (Zürich and Bern are exceptions) is to go for a long float downriver. Stepping into the water from the Museum Tinguely, with all your clothes and valuables safely stowed in your bag, you can float down the Rhine, keeping relatively close to the bank, for 3km to the Dreirosen Buvette (just before the Dreirosen bridge). There you can step out the water, take a shower (there’s a public one) and sit in the sun, while ordering drinks or food.
Up-to-date safety information and a handy map of where to swim are available online from city authorities.
Dinner and a bar tour
Later, it’s time for dinner at the charming Volkshaus restaurant in Kleinbasel: a big, airy brasserie with a bar attached that also has a concert-sized space used for theatre productions and other events. It being asparagus season, I had a plate of perfectly cooked spears (white, as they are preferred in Switzerland) doused in butter to go alongside my schnitzel, its crumb puffed up perfectly. In fine weather, tables are set up in the courtyard too.
After dinner, it was my brief to go barhopping. First stop, Amber. Set in the city’s old barracks, this is another temple to mixology, with some seriously adult drinks. The interior is dark and deco, but there’s also a lovely roof terrace at the top of one of the barracks’ towers, with fantastic views across the river. (Heading further into Kleinbasel, you can also take in the fantastic views from 105 metres up at Bar Rouge, but the cocktails are more basic and the atmosphere a little less interesting.)
For a break from spirits, I went to Consum, a wine bar that is also in Kleinbasel. Two extremely reasonably priced glasses of an unwisely chosen powerful Corsican red later, it was time to stumble back home. Even at 1am or so, people were still arriving for drinks.
For those carrying on later, Martin Bornemann, owner of Herz bar, recommended trying Irrsinn, open until 3am on Fridays and Saturdays: a punk, rock, metal and blues bar. Lots of attitude and lots of fun, it is, I suspect, more in the Eurovision tradition of Lordi or Måneskin than Netta.
Sunday
Street food under cover
Sundays are quiet in Switzerland: most shops are closed, so don’t expect to find a lot of life in the old town before lunchtime, which means there is plenty of time for more swimming or another museum. Alternatively, you can also easily rent bikes, and it’s not a long journey out of the city into the countryside. The adventurous can cross between three countries by e-bike in a couple of hours.
Before catching my train mid-afternoon, I visited one last Basel institution: the Markthalle. Cities everywhere have these now, so the novelty of a covered food hall may not be so great, but Basel’s is still worth your time. Set under a single Pantheon-like dome (with oculus) built in 1929, it’s a compact but bustling space of street-food vendors and bars. (It’s open until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays, so a good option for food and drinks at non-standard hours for Eurovision goers.)
I had time for a takeaway arancini and a couple of glasses of crisp Italian wine at Vino e/y Vino, run by Liliana Sciascia, a former pharmaceutical-industry professional turned wine academic. If you have time to spare, grab a fortifying espresso at the delightful Zum Kuss in the park in front of the station: a little bar-café usually jam-packed with locals in the sun, enjoying spritzes and beers.
Sam Jones was a guest of www.basel.com
Eurovision Song Contest, Basel, May 13–17
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