Basel Minster is one of the major attractions in Basel and one of the highlights of our morning walk through Basel. We are happy that it is supposed to be open today but as we approach the huge building we notice the doors are closed and a homeless person sleeping in front of it making it difficult to even test if it is open.
We walk a bit around it and notice another door is open, phew. Inside it looks like a Catholic church but it doesn’t have all the frills and decorations. This makes sense given its history, it was Catholic till the Protestant wars in 1529 when during the iconoclasm most pieces of art, like altars, icons and paintings, inside the cathedral were destroyed.
Still there are a few beautiful examples of craftmanship remaining including the raised pulpit and the stained glass windows.
We stop in the middle of the church to take a look forward and back, it is quite a large church. We are also searching for the way to the crypt area which has a museum like exhibit according to our research. Finally we are able to find it and down we go.
As we enter the crypt it is dark and we feel our way to some seats when it is clear that some type of program is running. It is actually a history of the church movie that is more interactive from the point of view that it highlights the areas that it describes or it even shows some images to put the things in context, especially the big earthquake from 1356 and the iconoclasm from 1529.
It is a longer than expected show but it is quite informative so we don’t mind. It also helps to understand the different ruins excavated in the crypt area, otherwise it would be difficult to put them into perspective.
After the show we take a look at the small exhibit, it has some items and a written description of what we watched showing how the church changed throughout the years.
We exit near the altar, something quite unusual as usually it is cordoned off. We enjoy the views of the church from here at take some time to admire the stained glass windows which as usual are quite beautiful.
We also take some time to walk past the various tombs which are exhibited here. We wonder if this is where they were originally placed or whether they were moved as part of the Reformation.
The last part of our visit is the former cloister area. We assume that it was disbanded during the Reformation but it is still a nice place to walk through and explore the many tombstones exhibited on the walls.
It also has one of the better views of the Minster in our opinion and a few interesting iron sculptures exhibits that initially scare us as we assume they are actual people selling fruit inside the cloister…
We exit at the back of the minster close to a very popular viewpoint over the Rhine. Here we spend some time enjoying the great views of the Rhine and the other side of Basel.
We then finish our walk around the Minster by exiting into the Minster square. It is well maintained and quite nice and we explore it a bit while trying to find a way out of it, different from where we entered near the Minster.
We finally find the right street, which takes us towards the Town Hall and Central Square. This street is probably the most popular in Basel, for tourists. There are even many Asian tour groups here, which is quite unexpected. Because while Basel is reasonably beautiful there are many other cities that we would recommend vs Basel for a Europe visit.
Soon we decide to deviate from the busy street through some side streets which are quite scenic and empty. We take lots of photos here before arriving at the stair that will take us down to the Central Town Square and the other major attraction in Basel, the Rathaus (City Hall not Rat House).
