A rainy afternoon, or legs tired from the cobbles? The Old Town packs its museums into a few walkable streets, so you can pick one, see it properly and still be back for dinner. We kept to the ones with something a kid will stop and stare at, from stuffed animals and ancient tombs to old instruments and church treasures.
The Swiss Fire Brigade Museum follows how firefighting equipment developed, with objects dating back as far as the 13th century. Its several floors run from medieval hand-operated spraying devices to modern oxygen breathing sets, collected across Switzerland and mostly from the Basel region.
Kids who are into fire engines and old machines get plenty of historic equipment to study up close.
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.
The Musikmuseum fills the Lohnhof, a former monastery that served as a prison until 1995, on a hill above Barfüsserplatz. About 550 European instruments from five centuries are displayed in 24 former prison cells, so kids walk from cell to cell rather than through big halls.
The local star is the oldest intact Basel drum, or "Drummle", from 1571.
The Barfüsserkirche has housed the museum of Basel's history since 1894. Displays run from archaeological finds and medieval religious art to present-day objects. Look for the cathedral treasury, the Basel Dance of Death, medieval tapestries and Renaissance cabinets of curiosities.
Temporary exhibitions pair the collection with current social issues, and the family program adds drop-in workshops and tours.
Kunstmuseum Basel holds the oldest public art collection in the world, which began with a cabinet of Holbein works bought by the city and university in 1661. The Hauptbau covers painting from the Middle Ages to postwar modernism, with Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet, van Gogh and Picasso along the way.
An underground passage leads to the Neubau across the street, home to the big special exhibitions.
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.
The Swiss Museum of Paper, Writing and Printing sits in a late medieval mill beside a rushing mill stream, where the mill wheel turns and the stamping mill hammers away. Kids scoop their own sheet of paper, write with a goose quill, try a typewriter, typeset their name and make marbled paper. Craftspeople work the historic machines on site, so families watch printing and bookbinding done the old way.
Switzerland's largest anthropological museum holds over 340,000 objects from around the world, shown in changing exhibitions on the Münsterplatz. In the permanent Alive galleries, kids can join in braiding a giant textile tree among carved ancestors and altars.
A separate annex covers Basel Carnival, with ceiling-high lanterns, masks, costumes, piccolos and drums, plus a replica carnival pub.
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.
Four floors and more than 1,000 square meters of historical toys: over 2,500 teddy bears (the most comprehensive collection in the world, many by Steiff), dolls, old dolls' houses, grocery shops and 1:12 miniatures. Many scenes start moving at the push of a button.
On an animated tablet tour, virtual figures move through the displays, and a kids' track sends zeppelins flying and music notes dancing out of a gramophone.
A rainy afternoon, or legs tired from the cobbles? The Old Town packs its museums into a few walkable streets, so you can pick one, see it properly and still be back for dinner. We kept to the ones with something a kid will stop and stare at, from stuffed animals and ancient tombs to old instruments and church treasures.
The Swiss Fire Brigade Museum follows how firefighting equipment developed, with objects dating back as far as the 13th century. Its several floors run from medieval hand-operated spraying devices to modern oxygen breathing sets, collected across Switzerland and mostly from the Basel region.
Kids who are into fire engines and old machines get plenty of historic equipment to study up close.
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.
The Musikmuseum fills the Lohnhof, a former monastery that served as a prison until 1995, on a hill above Barfüsserplatz. About 550 European instruments from five centuries are displayed in 24 former prison cells, so kids walk from cell to cell rather than through big halls.
The local star is the oldest intact Basel drum, or "Drummle", from 1571.
The Barfüsserkirche has housed the museum of Basel's history since 1894. Displays run from archaeological finds and medieval religious art to present-day objects. Look for the cathedral treasury, the Basel Dance of Death, medieval tapestries and Renaissance cabinets of curiosities.
Temporary exhibitions pair the collection with current social issues, and the family program adds drop-in workshops and tours.
Kunstmuseum Basel holds the oldest public art collection in the world, which began with a cabinet of Holbein works bought by the city and university in 1661. The Hauptbau covers painting from the Middle Ages to postwar modernism, with Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet, van Gogh and Picasso along the way.
An underground passage leads to the Neubau across the street, home to the big special exhibitions.
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.
The Swiss Museum of Paper, Writing and Printing sits in a late medieval mill beside a rushing mill stream, where the mill wheel turns and the stamping mill hammers away. Kids scoop their own sheet of paper, write with a goose quill, try a typewriter, typeset their name and make marbled paper. Craftspeople work the historic machines on site, so families watch printing and bookbinding done the old way.
Switzerland's largest anthropological museum holds over 340,000 objects from around the world, shown in changing exhibitions on the Münsterplatz. In the permanent Alive galleries, kids can join in braiding a giant textile tree among carved ancestors and altars.
A separate annex covers Basel Carnival, with ceiling-high lanterns, masks, costumes, piccolos and drums, plus a replica carnival pub.
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.
Four floors and more than 1,000 square meters of historical toys: over 2,500 teddy bears (the most comprehensive collection in the world, many by Steiff), dolls, old dolls' houses, grocery shops and 1:12 miniatures. Many scenes start moving at the push of a button.
On an animated tablet tour, virtual figures move through the displays, and a kids' track sends zeppelins flying and music notes dancing out of a gramophone.
