Hosting a birthday at home means a living room full of sugar and noise. These venues take the party off your hands: museums run guided parties (mostly in German), trampoline halls and soft play have party rooms and packages, and a few spots just over the German border add go-karts and a castle ruin. Here's what we checked, from the Natural History Museum to Rötteln Castle.
The permanent galleries fill an old town building with dinosaurs, a mammoth and saber-toothed tiger, whales and fish, ammonites and other fossils, and invertebrates from squid to butterflies.
One gallery follows a butterfly from egg to adult, another covers threatened and extinct animals like the quagga and dodo, and Showcase Nature brings together the birds, mammals and minerals of Switzerland.
Kiddy Park Basel is an indoor play hall with a ball pit, a trampoline jump area, climbing structures and obstacle courses. Babies get soft crawling zones, and under-6s have their own area with smaller equipment.
The play is active and low-tech, with no screens or entertainers. Staff supervise the floor, parents can sit in the lounge, and a snack corner and the Munchkin Island restaurant serve kids' meals.
Jump Factory Basel is a trampoline park in Münchenstein with around 20 zones on one ticket. Kids bounce on the mega and long trampolines, launch into the foam pit, run up the warped wall, race down the speed slide and take on a ninja warrior course, climbing wall, battle beam, ropes course and zip line.
Parents who don't jump can wait in the café while kids play.
Museum Tinguely holds the world's largest collection of work by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely: moving machine sculptures built around wheels and motors, most of them still in working order. The permanent exhibition has many hands-on spots where visitors set things in motion.
On the second floor, a glass wall looks into the open workshop where restorers keep the machines running. Solitude Park and the Rhine bank sit right outside.
ELYS Boulderloft is a bouldering gym with over 2,000 m² of climbing surface and new problems set every week. Kids under 13 boulder in the New Hall with a parent who climbs too, and can earn a bouldering license that opens the Big Hall.
Younger kids have the movement landscape, a play-and-run area with its own family bistro.
Hoppolino is a large indoor soft play center. The main draw is a 6 m Spider-Tower with several climbing levels, plus a big climbing frame, a spiral slide that drops into an extra-large ball pit, a 4 m trampoline and a go-kart track.
The smallest children get a separate toddler area, and an interactive floor-and-wall game zone is listed as coming soon.
MUKS is a small museum in a historic building in Riehen, the village on the Swiss-German border. Its permanent Spiel (play) exhibition fills rooms themed on dreaming, living and cheating with old toys, odd inventions and a dream bubble to slip into.
A second permanent show, Village, tells Riehen's history. Outside, a courtyard and garden have seating, sun umbrellas, games and a self-service kiosk.
A play café built around a large playroom with a climbing structure, toys and play corners, set up for babies and toddlers. Parents sit in the café with coffee and homemade cupcakes and keep an eye on the playroom through a TV monitor.
Highchairs, toddler stools, a changing area, nursing armchairs and covered buggy parking are all there, plus table games for older siblings.
aquabasilea is a big indoor water park with seven slides totaling 824 meters, from the open Family Splash tube to the near-vertical Cliffdrop and the dark Extrême, which hits 59 km/h.
There's a wave pool with kickboards, a toddler pool, two wild-water channels and a current channel. Outside are a grotto, water mushrooms and a warm kids' paddling pool.
Antikenmuseum Basel holds Switzerland's largest collection of ancient art, spanning 5,000 years of Mediterranean cultures. The Egypt rooms show some 600 objects, including painted coffins, mummies and amulets, with a children's trail and audio-visual displays.
Elsewhere are Greek vases painted with myths and everyday scenes, Greek sculptures in the top-lit Oberlichtsaal, and Roman portraits and sarcophagi in the basement. A bistro is on site.
Cartoonmuseum Basel is a museum of narrative drawing: comics, graphic novels, cartoons, caricature and animation. Its changing exhibitions draw on more than 12,000 original works, shown in an old townhouse renovated and extended by Herzog & de Meuron.
Each exhibition gets a Cartoon Sunday, a family afternoon where kids try drawing and comic techniques in the studio. It suits kids who like to draw more than kids who want to run.
A big indoor funpark with two giant trampolines (over 20 jump beds with basketball hoops and a tumble line), a two-level kids ninja course, an inflatable donut slide, a climbing volcano with a slide, tunnel and wave slides, and a small soccer pitch.
A three-level play structure with bridges, tunnels and a fast steel slide has a separate toddler area.
An indoor mini golf course with 18 holes, played in darkened rooms under UV light. Fluorescent painted scenery and 3D backdrops glow around every hole, and players wear 3D glasses that make the walls pop out.
The same building has a free-roam virtual reality arena, an arcade with billiards, basketball and air hockey, a bistro and a terrace.
Sprisse is a leisure center with 12 bowling lanes, where staff raise automatic side walls for kids so the ball stays out of the gutter. In the evenings the lanes switch to disco bowling under blacklight, with music.
The same hall has 15 pool tables, dart machines, foosball and pinball, plus a restaurant serving homemade pizza.
Room Escape Basel runs six themed escape rooms at Voltaplatz, where a team has 60 minutes to crack the puzzles and get out. Two have a Kids Escape version with puzzles pitched at children: Hildegards Geheimnis, where kids follow the clues in a mysterious diary, and Das verschwundene Koboldgold, a hunt for goblin treasure inside the Escape Bar across the street.
A large indoor play hall with a climbing tower, trampolines, a go-kart track, bumper cars, a soccer pitch and a roller slide. A separate area is set aside for kids up to 5, and the play equipment is built for adults too.
Parents can sit in the bistro, which serves snacks and hot and cold drinks, or bring food from home.
An indoor play hall that is part of the IMPULSIV leisure center, just over the border from Basel. The centerpiece is a big climbing tower with a tube slide, softball shooter, wave slide and rope course, plus a free-fall slide, electric go-karts, a trampoline, a wobble mountain and a soccer cage.
Toddlers get their own area with slides, a ball pool and big Lego blocks.
Rötteln is one of the largest castle ruins in southern Baden, stretching about 300 meters along a hilltop spur above Lörrach. Kids can climb both keeps for views over the corner where Germany, Switzerland and France meet, roam the walls and courtyards, and see the small castle museum with its fairy-tale organ and weapons display. Behind the castle, a grill area has a well-known climbing root.
Switzerland's most-visited museum covers rail, road, air, water and space travel. Kids can see original locomotives, two Swissair planes, rockets and Mars rovers, a submarine, and a 31.5-meter model of the Gotthard railway. A walk-in cube makes the floor turn into a wall.
Outside, younger kids ride scooters, climb into play buses and take the miniature garden railway. A planetarium, a film theater and a chocolate ride share the site.
Robi Horburg is a staffed adventure playground in Horburgpark, run by Robi-Spiel-Aktionen. Kids explore the adventure grounds, build and tinker in the workshop, and use the indoor play rooms. Dwarf goats and rabbits live on site. Together with Robi Volta, it was the first Robi playground in Switzerland.
Kids play freely and come and go as they like; staff help when asked but do not supervise.
Hosting a birthday at home means a living room full of sugar and noise. These venues take the party off your hands: museums run guided parties (mostly in German), trampoline halls and soft play have party rooms and packages, and a few spots just over the German border add go-karts and a castle ruin. Here's what we checked, from the Natural History Museum to Rötteln Castle.
The permanent galleries fill an old town building with dinosaurs, a mammoth and saber-toothed tiger, whales and fish, ammonites and other fossils, and invertebrates from squid to butterflies.
One gallery follows a butterfly from egg to adult, another covers threatened and extinct animals like the quagga and dodo, and Showcase Nature brings together the birds, mammals and minerals of Switzerland.
Kiddy Park Basel is an indoor play hall with a ball pit, a trampoline jump area, climbing structures and obstacle courses. Babies get soft crawling zones, and under-6s have their own area with smaller equipment.
The play is active and low-tech, with no screens or entertainers. Staff supervise the floor, parents can sit in the lounge, and a snack corner and the Munchkin Island restaurant serve kids' meals.
Jump Factory Basel is a trampoline park in Münchenstein with around 20 zones on one ticket. Kids bounce on the mega and long trampolines, launch into the foam pit, run up the warped wall, race down the speed slide and take on a ninja warrior course, climbing wall, battle beam, ropes course and zip line.
Parents who don't jump can wait in the café while kids play.
Museum Tinguely holds the world's largest collection of work by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely: moving machine sculptures built around wheels and motors, most of them still in working order. The permanent exhibition has many hands-on spots where visitors set things in motion.
On the second floor, a glass wall looks into the open workshop where restorers keep the machines running. Solitude Park and the Rhine bank sit right outside.
ELYS Boulderloft is a bouldering gym with over 2,000 m² of climbing surface and new problems set every week. Kids under 13 boulder in the New Hall with a parent who climbs too, and can earn a bouldering license that opens the Big Hall.
Younger kids have the movement landscape, a play-and-run area with its own family bistro.
Hoppolino is a large indoor soft play center. The main draw is a 6 m Spider-Tower with several climbing levels, plus a big climbing frame, a spiral slide that drops into an extra-large ball pit, a 4 m trampoline and a go-kart track.
The smallest children get a separate toddler area, and an interactive floor-and-wall game zone is listed as coming soon.
MUKS is a small museum in a historic building in Riehen, the village on the Swiss-German border. Its permanent Spiel (play) exhibition fills rooms themed on dreaming, living and cheating with old toys, odd inventions and a dream bubble to slip into.
A second permanent show, Village, tells Riehen's history. Outside, a courtyard and garden have seating, sun umbrellas, games and a self-service kiosk.
A play café built around a large playroom with a climbing structure, toys and play corners, set up for babies and toddlers. Parents sit in the café with coffee and homemade cupcakes and keep an eye on the playroom through a TV monitor.
Highchairs, toddler stools, a changing area, nursing armchairs and covered buggy parking are all there, plus table games for older siblings.
aquabasilea is a big indoor water park with seven slides totaling 824 meters, from the open Family Splash tube to the near-vertical Cliffdrop and the dark Extrême, which hits 59 km/h.
There's a wave pool with kickboards, a toddler pool, two wild-water channels and a current channel. Outside are a grotto, water mushrooms and a warm kids' paddling pool.
Antikenmuseum Basel holds Switzerland's largest collection of ancient art, spanning 5,000 years of Mediterranean cultures. The Egypt rooms show some 600 objects, including painted coffins, mummies and amulets, with a children's trail and audio-visual displays.
Elsewhere are Greek vases painted with myths and everyday scenes, Greek sculptures in the top-lit Oberlichtsaal, and Roman portraits and sarcophagi in the basement. A bistro is on site.
Cartoonmuseum Basel is a museum of narrative drawing: comics, graphic novels, cartoons, caricature and animation. Its changing exhibitions draw on more than 12,000 original works, shown in an old townhouse renovated and extended by Herzog & de Meuron.
Each exhibition gets a Cartoon Sunday, a family afternoon where kids try drawing and comic techniques in the studio. It suits kids who like to draw more than kids who want to run.
A big indoor funpark with two giant trampolines (over 20 jump beds with basketball hoops and a tumble line), a two-level kids ninja course, an inflatable donut slide, a climbing volcano with a slide, tunnel and wave slides, and a small soccer pitch.
A three-level play structure with bridges, tunnels and a fast steel slide has a separate toddler area.
An indoor mini golf course with 18 holes, played in darkened rooms under UV light. Fluorescent painted scenery and 3D backdrops glow around every hole, and players wear 3D glasses that make the walls pop out.
The same building has a free-roam virtual reality arena, an arcade with billiards, basketball and air hockey, a bistro and a terrace.
Sprisse is a leisure center with 12 bowling lanes, where staff raise automatic side walls for kids so the ball stays out of the gutter. In the evenings the lanes switch to disco bowling under blacklight, with music.
The same hall has 15 pool tables, dart machines, foosball and pinball, plus a restaurant serving homemade pizza.
Room Escape Basel runs six themed escape rooms at Voltaplatz, where a team has 60 minutes to crack the puzzles and get out. Two have a Kids Escape version with puzzles pitched at children: Hildegards Geheimnis, where kids follow the clues in a mysterious diary, and Das verschwundene Koboldgold, a hunt for goblin treasure inside the Escape Bar across the street.
A large indoor play hall with a climbing tower, trampolines, a go-kart track, bumper cars, a soccer pitch and a roller slide. A separate area is set aside for kids up to 5, and the play equipment is built for adults too.
Parents can sit in the bistro, which serves snacks and hot and cold drinks, or bring food from home.
An indoor play hall that is part of the IMPULSIV leisure center, just over the border from Basel. The centerpiece is a big climbing tower with a tube slide, softball shooter, wave slide and rope course, plus a free-fall slide, electric go-karts, a trampoline, a wobble mountain and a soccer cage.
Toddlers get their own area with slides, a ball pool and big Lego blocks.
Rötteln is one of the largest castle ruins in southern Baden, stretching about 300 meters along a hilltop spur above Lörrach. Kids can climb both keeps for views over the corner where Germany, Switzerland and France meet, roam the walls and courtyards, and see the small castle museum with its fairy-tale organ and weapons display. Behind the castle, a grill area has a well-known climbing root.
Switzerland's most-visited museum covers rail, road, air, water and space travel. Kids can see original locomotives, two Swissair planes, rockets and Mars rovers, a submarine, and a 31.5-meter model of the Gotthard railway. A walk-in cube makes the floor turn into a wall.
Outside, younger kids ride scooters, climb into play buses and take the miniature garden railway. A planetarium, a film theater and a chocolate ride share the site.
Robi Horburg is a staffed adventure playground in Horburgpark, run by Robi-Spiel-Aktionen. Kids explore the adventure grounds, build and tinker in the workshop, and use the indoor play rooms. Dwarf goats and rabbits live on site. Together with Robi Volta, it was the first Robi playground in Switzerland.
Kids play freely and come and go as they like; staff help when asked but do not supervise.
