Autumn is when the hills around Basel turn gold and the old town fills with the Herbstmesse, its autumn fair since 1471. The air is cool enough for long forest walks and tower climbs, and the animal parks and the Roman city are open all year. Here's what we checked for the weekends before winter, from the Roman theater at Augusta Raurica to the lookout tower above Gempen.
Basel's Herbstmesse, "d Mäss" to locals, has run every autumn since 1471 and is the biggest funfair in Switzerland. Rides, game booths and food stalls fill squares on both sides of the Rhine: old-time carousels and a Ferris wheel beside the Münster, faster rides in Kleinbasel, and a pottery and craft market under the plane trees on Petersplatz. Snack stops: Mässmogge candy, spiced Magenbrot and hot chestnuts.
Augusta Raurica is the excavated Roman town at Augst, with more than twenty monuments to view, walk on or touch. Kids can sit in the best-preserved Roman theater north of the Alps, stand inside a Roman sewer channel and explore a furnished Roman house modeled on a Pompeii villa.
The museum puts some finds at kid eye level, and the animal park keeps breeds similar to Roman farm animals.
Ermitage Arlesheim is a landscape garden opened in 1785 across 40 hectares of wooded valley. Paths wind past ponds, an old mill, a rock gate and a string of grottoes, up to a hermit's hut and the Schloss Birseck castle ruin with its Knight's Hall.
A riddle booklet written for kids turns the walk into a hunt for clues at each numbered station.
Gempenturm is a 28-meter steel lookout tower with five levels, standing in the woods at the edge of the Gempen plateau. From the top, kids can pick out Basel, the Baselbiet, Alsace and the Vosges, and the Black Forest.
Hiking trails, some with steep climbs, loop around the tower, and the Gempenturm restaurant sits right next to it.
St. Chrischona is the highest point of Basel-Stadt: a wooded hilltop above Bettingen with a church, a playground and Switzerland's tallest freestanding structure, the 250-meter TV tower. 71 steps under the church tower lead to a platform with views to the Alps, the Jura, the Black Forest and the Vosges.
The Generationenparcours playground has a slide, climbing course, seesaw, swings and a bouldering block, plus a forest zip line.
A wildlife park in the Lange Erlen riverside woods along the Wiese, run by the Erlen-Verein since 1871. It keeps native animals across about 20 hectares: European bison, red and fallow deer, chamois, lynx, wildcats and foxes, plus owls in aviaries and waterbirds on the ponds.
Rare Swiss farm breeds such as Valais sheep and woolly pigs round it out.
Merian Gardens covers 18 hectares of gardens and organic farmland run by the Christoph Merian Foundation. Kids can visit the sheep, chickens and rabbits in the stables, spot frogs and dragonflies at the pond along the shady canal path, and look for beaver tooth marks on trees.
There is also a mill museum, an orchard with 300 fruit varieties, a historic iris collection and a rhododendron valley that blooms in spring.
The first national nature reserve in Alsace, created in 1982, covers 904 hectares of the Rhine's old floodplain: reed beds, wet meadows, marshes and riverside woods. Trails and bird hides cross two sites, the historic core and the Ile du Rhin, and Highland cattle and Konik horses graze the meadows. In the core, two exhibitions about the Rhine and its salmon fill the buildings of Napoleon III's imperial fish farm.
Solarbob is a toboggan run of over 1,000 meters with banked curves, tunnels, a free speed check and a 540-degree spiral. Riders sit alone or in pairs, get pulled uphill by a solar-powered lift, and set their own speed with a lever on the way down.
Beside it, the rope park runs its courses from one central tower, with a continuous safety line so nobody unclips between platforms.
Switzerland's oldest zoo, opened in 1874, holds over 500 species in the Birsig stream valley, a short walk from Basel SBB station. Kids can watch king and gentoo penguins in the Vivarium aquarium, gorillas and orangutans in the monkey house, lions and cheetahs in the Etosha area, and Indian rhinos sharing their ponds with otters. Locals call it the Zolli.
Margarethenpark is the big green space for the Gundeldingen neighborhood ("Gundeli"), though it sits just over the line in Binningen. A wide open lawn is ringed by old trees, with woodland paths behind.
The main playground by the Sempacherstrasse entrance, built in 2026, has a mammoth, a baby mammoth and a volcano. A smaller one by Frobenstrasse has a climbing course and a paddling pool.
Autumn is when the hills around Basel turn gold and the old town fills with the Herbstmesse, its autumn fair since 1471. The air is cool enough for long forest walks and tower climbs, and the animal parks and the Roman city are open all year. Here's what we checked for the weekends before winter, from the Roman theater at Augusta Raurica to the lookout tower above Gempen.
Basel's Herbstmesse, "d Mäss" to locals, has run every autumn since 1471 and is the biggest funfair in Switzerland. Rides, game booths and food stalls fill squares on both sides of the Rhine: old-time carousels and a Ferris wheel beside the Münster, faster rides in Kleinbasel, and a pottery and craft market under the plane trees on Petersplatz. Snack stops: Mässmogge candy, spiced Magenbrot and hot chestnuts.
Augusta Raurica is the excavated Roman town at Augst, with more than twenty monuments to view, walk on or touch. Kids can sit in the best-preserved Roman theater north of the Alps, stand inside a Roman sewer channel and explore a furnished Roman house modeled on a Pompeii villa.
The museum puts some finds at kid eye level, and the animal park keeps breeds similar to Roman farm animals.
Ermitage Arlesheim is a landscape garden opened in 1785 across 40 hectares of wooded valley. Paths wind past ponds, an old mill, a rock gate and a string of grottoes, up to a hermit's hut and the Schloss Birseck castle ruin with its Knight's Hall.
A riddle booklet written for kids turns the walk into a hunt for clues at each numbered station.
Gempenturm is a 28-meter steel lookout tower with five levels, standing in the woods at the edge of the Gempen plateau. From the top, kids can pick out Basel, the Baselbiet, Alsace and the Vosges, and the Black Forest.
Hiking trails, some with steep climbs, loop around the tower, and the Gempenturm restaurant sits right next to it.
St. Chrischona is the highest point of Basel-Stadt: a wooded hilltop above Bettingen with a church, a playground and Switzerland's tallest freestanding structure, the 250-meter TV tower. 71 steps under the church tower lead to a platform with views to the Alps, the Jura, the Black Forest and the Vosges.
The Generationenparcours playground has a slide, climbing course, seesaw, swings and a bouldering block, plus a forest zip line.
A wildlife park in the Lange Erlen riverside woods along the Wiese, run by the Erlen-Verein since 1871. It keeps native animals across about 20 hectares: European bison, red and fallow deer, chamois, lynx, wildcats and foxes, plus owls in aviaries and waterbirds on the ponds.
Rare Swiss farm breeds such as Valais sheep and woolly pigs round it out.
Merian Gardens covers 18 hectares of gardens and organic farmland run by the Christoph Merian Foundation. Kids can visit the sheep, chickens and rabbits in the stables, spot frogs and dragonflies at the pond along the shady canal path, and look for beaver tooth marks on trees.
There is also a mill museum, an orchard with 300 fruit varieties, a historic iris collection and a rhododendron valley that blooms in spring.
The first national nature reserve in Alsace, created in 1982, covers 904 hectares of the Rhine's old floodplain: reed beds, wet meadows, marshes and riverside woods. Trails and bird hides cross two sites, the historic core and the Ile du Rhin, and Highland cattle and Konik horses graze the meadows. In the core, two exhibitions about the Rhine and its salmon fill the buildings of Napoleon III's imperial fish farm.
Solarbob is a toboggan run of over 1,000 meters with banked curves, tunnels, a free speed check and a 540-degree spiral. Riders sit alone or in pairs, get pulled uphill by a solar-powered lift, and set their own speed with a lever on the way down.
Beside it, the rope park runs its courses from one central tower, with a continuous safety line so nobody unclips between platforms.
Switzerland's oldest zoo, opened in 1874, holds over 500 species in the Birsig stream valley, a short walk from Basel SBB station. Kids can watch king and gentoo penguins in the Vivarium aquarium, gorillas and orangutans in the monkey house, lions and cheetahs in the Etosha area, and Indian rhinos sharing their ponds with otters. Locals call it the Zolli.
Margarethenpark is the big green space for the Gundeldingen neighborhood ("Gundeli"), though it sits just over the line in Binningen. A wide open lawn is ringed by old trees, with woodland paths behind.
The main playground by the Sempacherstrasse entrance, built in 2026, has a mammoth, a baby mammoth and a volcano. A smaller one by Frobenstrasse has a climbing course and a paddling pool.
