Exhibitions

A brief history of Basel from the earliest signs of human activity to the present.

Bruno Manser (1954–2005) was Switzerland’s best known environmentalist and human rights activist during his lifetime. He studied the language and culture of the Penan in Malaysian Borneo. This cabinet exhibition on the activist was organized in cooperation with the Bruno Manser Fonds and the Museum der Kulturen Basel.

Starting in July, the Basel Historical Museum is to show the Basel Quran. The manuscript penned in Egypt or Syria in 1242 was brought to the Council of Basel from Constantinople in 1437.

They count among the great treasures of the art of porcelain-making: tureens in the shape of animals and deceptively real-looking plates of olives or lettuce made at the Hannong faience manufactory in Strasbourg.

The presentation of medieval art in the Basel Historical Museum offers exciting insights into the omnipresence of the Christian faith. Exquisite works of art from the 11th to 16th centuries unfold their beauty and spiritual power in the choir of the Barfüsserkirche.

The Basel Historical Museum is honouring the famous explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817), who as «Sheikh Ibrahim» travelled all over the Near East, with an extensively revised and expanded edition of a biography that has long been out of print. It is also staging a small exhibition about him inside the house in which he grew up, the Haus zum Kirschgarten.