Museums in Basel

Weil am Rhein station is a small railway junction in Weil am Rhein in the German state of Baden-Württemberg on the German-Swiss border. The Weil am Rhein–Lörrach railway (known as the Gartenbahn—"Garden Railway") branches off the Mannheim–Karlsruhe–Basel railway (Rhine Valley Railway) at the station. From 1878 to 1937, the station was the starting point of the Weil am Rhein–Saint-Louis line to the French town of Saint-Louis.

Weil am Rhein (High Alemannic: Wiil am Rhii) is a German town and commune. It is on the east bank of the River Rhine, and extends to the point at which the Swiss, French and German borders meet. It is the most southwesterly town in Germany and a suburb of the Swiss city Basel. Weil am Rhein is part of the "trinationale Agglomeration Basel" with about 830,000 inhabitants.

The Three Countries Bridge (German: Dreiländerbrücke, French: La passerelle des Trois Pays) is an arch bridge which crosses the Rhine between the commune of Huningue (France) and Weil am Rhein (Germany), within the Basel (Switzerland) metropolitan area. It is the world's longest single-span bridge dedicated exclusively to carrying pedestrians and cyclists. Its overall length is 248 metres (813 ft 8 in) and its main span is 229.4 metres (752 ft 7 in).Its name comes from the bridge's location between France, Germany and Switzerland (which is about 200 metres (660 ft) distant). It was designed by the Franco-Austrian architect Dietmar Feichtinger.

The Vitra Fire Station is a concrete and steel building of 852 m2 (9,170 sq ft) located at the Vitra Furniture factory in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Completed in 1993, it was the first constructed project by Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid.

The Vitra Slide Tower is a 30.74 meter high observation tower located in the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany. It was inaugurated on 18 June 2014 and was created by the German artist Carsten Höller. A viewing platform is situated at 17 metres of height. It serves also as the starting point for the 38-metre-long corkscrew tube slide. On top of the tower there is mounted a clock of a diameter of six metres.

Induced seismicity in Basel led to suspension of its hot dry rock enhanced geothermal systems project. A seismic-hazard evaluation was then conducted, resulting in the cancellation of the project in December 2009. Basel, Switzerland sits atop a historically active fault and most of the city was destroyed in a magnitude 6.5 earthquake in 1356. But the Basel project, although it had established an operational approach for addressing induced earthquakes, had not performed a thorough seismic risk assessment before starting geothermal stimulation.Seismic events in Basel reached the trip point of Richter Magnitude ML  2.9 six days after the main stimulation was started on December 2, despite precautionary reduction of the injection rate earlier that same day upon reaching earlier "soft" thresholds. However, further tremors exceeding magnitude 3 were recorded on 6 January (measuring 3.1), 16 January 2007 (3.2), and 2 February 2007 (3.2).In all, between December 2006 and March 2007, the six borehole seismometers installed near the Basel injection well recorded more than 13,500 potential events connected with the geothermal project. The 200 largest were between magnitudes 0.7 and 3.4. Nine of these events had an ML  of 2.5 or larger. The remainder were too small to be observed or felt at the surface. Between December 2 and January 24, 168 seismic events with magnitude greater than 0.6 occurred within 1 km of the wellbore, at depths of 4–5 km, near the well bottom.On 8 December 2006, only 6 days after the main stimulation started on 2 December, the HDR project in Basel was suspended when an earthquake tripped a 4-level "traffic light" scheme established for halting operations in the event of unacceptable induced earthquake occurrences. Trip points of Richter magnitudeML  2.9 and a peak ground velocity of 5 millimeters per second were established by the project as independent criteria for a "red alert" that entailed halting fluid injection and bleeding-off to minimum wellhead pressure. Lesser operational curtailments were triggered for lower magnitude and peak ground velocity thresholds. Earlier that day, a "yellow alert"—the second level—was called at 03:06 local time after a 2.6 ML  event with peak ground velocity of 0.55 mm/s, which exceeded the "soft" 2.3 ML  and 0.5 mm/s thresholds. As a precaution, the injection rate was reduced at 04:04.Following further events that were larger than 2.0ML , a level-three "orange alert" was declared—the injection was stopped at 11:34 and the well shut-in, maintaining the pressure. However, a 2.7 ML  event occurred at 15:46, followed by a 3.4 ML  event at 16:48, and so in accordance with the response strategy, the well was bled off as soon as practicable.The largest event prompted concern from local residents. The six borehole seismometers installed near the Basel injection well to monitor the natural background seismicity and the geothermal stimulation recorded more than 13,500 potential events connected with the geothermal project, from which 3,124 were of sufficient quality to permit [hypocenter] determinations in the period 2–12 December 2006, which spanned the main stimulation and the decline in the event rate. During the post-stimulation period from 13 December 2006 onward, a further 350 locatable events were detected up to 2 May 2007, by which time events were occurring sporadically at around one per day. In all, locations for more than 3,500 events were determined. Of these more than 3,500 events, only the 200 largest (magnitudes between 0.7 and 3.4) were also observed by the earthquake networks of the Swiss Seismological Service and the Seismological Service of Baden-Wuerttemberg, The remainder were too small to be observed or felt at the surface. For the period through 24 January 2007, there were 168 earthquakes with magnitudes> 0.6, 15 with ML  >2, and three withML  > 3. All of these were within 1 km of the wellbore, and at depths between 4 and 5 km, near the well bottom. There were only 9 events with an ML  of 2.5 or larger in the borehole vicinity for the period through 2007. Five occurred in December 2006, two in January 2007, and one each February and March.Damage claims arose from the largest of the events. Eventually, some 2,700 claims were processed by the project's insurer for an estimated 7 million – 9 million Swiss francs (about 6.5 million to 8.3 million U.S dollars)Following a three-year study, the Basel HDR project canceled in December 2009. The study predicted that the town would have continued to experience small earthquakes a few times a year over the 30-year lifetime of the project. The USA soon reacted with new regulations on deep geothermal energy projects.

The Dreiländereck is a monument in Basel, Switzerland. It marks the tripoint where the borders of France, Germany and Switzerland meet. The France–Germany border, the Germany–Switzerland border and France–Switzerland border meet there.

In the siege of Hüningen (27 November 1796 – 1 February 1797), the Austrians captured the city from the French. Hüningen is in the present-day Department of Haut-Rhin, France. Its fortress lay approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north of the Swiss city of Basel and .5 miles (0.80 km) north of the spot where the present-day borders of Germany, France and Switzerland meet. During the time of this siege, the village was part of the Canton of Basel City and the fortress lay in area contested between the German states and the First French Republic. The siege occurred within the French Revolutionary Wars during which Revolutionary France ranged itself against a Coalition that included most of the states with which it shared land or water borders. In particular, France was at odds with the European monarchies, who initially feared for the safety of Louis XVI and his wife, who was the sister of the Holy Roman Emperor. Fighting, which began in 1792, had been inconclusive. Fighting in 1795 had largely favored the Coalition; the Campaign in the Rhineland in 1796, though, had pushed the Coalition forces far into the German states; the Coalition forces had pushed back and, at the end of the summer's fighting in 1796, the Austrian force under command of Archduke Charles had succeeded in pushing the French back to the Rhine. With the conclusion of the Battle of Schliengen on 24 October, the French army withdrew south and west toward the Rhine. Forces commanded by Jean Charles Abbatucci and Pierre Marie Barthélemy Ferino provided the rear guard support and the main force retreated across the Rhine into France. The French retained control of the fortifications at Kehl and Hüningen and, more importantly, the tête-du-ponts (bridgeheads) of the star-shaped fortresses where the bridges crossed the Rhine. The French chief commander, Jean Victor Moreau, offered an armistice to the Austrian commander, which the archduke was inclined to accept. He wanted to secure the Rhine crossings and then send troops to northern Italy to relieve Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser at besieged Mantua; an armistice with Moreau would allow him to do that. However, his brother, Francis II, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the civilian military advisers of the Aulic Council categorically refused such an armistice, forcing Charles to order simultaneous sieges at Kehl and Hüningen. These tied his army to the Rhine for most of the winter. He himself moved north with the bulk of his force to invest the larger crossing at Kehl, and instructed Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg to conduct the siege in the south by Basel. While the Austrians besieged these Rhine crossings, Moreau had sufficient surplus troops to send 14 demi-brigades (approximately 12,000 troops) into Italy to assist in the siege at Mantua.Fürstenberg's force initiated the siege within days of the Austrian victory at the Battle of Schliengen. Most of the siege ran concurrently with the siege at Kehl, which concluded on 9 January 1797. By the time troops engaged at Kehl marched to Hüningen in preparation for a major assault, Fürstenberg had established extensive earthworks, built three large batteries that rained continuous cannonades into the fortress. The Habsburgs repelled a French sortie in early December in which Abbatucci, the French commander, was killed. His replacement, Georges Joseph Dufour, capitulated on 1 February 1797, preventing a costly assault, and the French evacuated, taking everything of value that remained with them. Like the conclusion of the siege at Hüningen, the Austrians took possession of a pile of rubble.

Haltingen station (German: Bahnhof Haltingen) is a railway station in the town of Weil am Rhein, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located on the Mannheim–Karlsruhe–Basel railway (Rhine Valley Railway) of Deutsche Bahn. The Kander Valley Railway heritage railway operates from a platform just north of the station.

Huningue (French pronunciation: [ynɛ̃ɡ] (listen); German: Hüningen; Alsatian: Hinige) is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department of Alsace in north-eastern France. Huningue is a northern suburb of the Swiss city of Basel. It also borders Germany (Weil am Rhein, a suburb of Basel located in Germany). In 2008 it had a population of 6503 people. The main square of the town is the Place Abbatucci, named after the Corsican-born French general Jean Charles Abbatucci who unsuccessfully defended it in 1796 against the Austrians and died here. Huningue is noted for its pisciculture and is a major producer of fish eggs.

The Vitra Design Museum is a privately owned museum for design in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Former Vitra CEO, and son of Vitra founders Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, Rolf Fehlbaum founded the museum in 1989 as an independent private foundation. The Vitra corporation provides it with a financial subsidy, the use of Vitra architecture, and organizational cooperation.

The Silo Tower of Basel is located in the Swiss city of Basel, in the Rhine harbour of Kleinhueningen, near the Dreiländereck. The silo tower was built in 1923 by a Swiss shipping company. Its viewing platform stands at a height of 52 metres (about 160 feet), which offers a view of the Rhine, the Rhine harbour, the city of Basel, and the Sundgauer hill country. In the distance, one may appreciate details in Germany and France. To this end, panoramic maps and telescopes are available to visitors.