Historisches Museum Basel

Coins have been part of everyday life for over two and a half millennia. They are an important source of information about everyday life in Basel and other regions. The coin presentation provides an insight into the premodern financial world and into the form and function of money. How that money was made is reconstructed in the goldsmith’s workshop and mint.
Medals have an obvious affinity to coins, but have never been legal tender. As a means of immortalizing the likeness of the subject in metal, they served purely artistic or propaganda purposes. Among the coins and medals shown here are some that Erasmus of Rotterdam kept as mementos.

> Barfüsser Church
Basement