Rembrandt in Basel

30 December 2020

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) never visited Basel, unlike Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), Erasmus is even buried in the cathedral (Münster) of Basel (1536). However, at that time Basel was not an episcopal city anymore, and the cathedral was a reformed church since the Reformation in 1529. More than three hundred and fifty years after the … Read more » “Rembrandt in Basel”

Cantonal Family Affair

27 December 2020

Switzerland has more than 2200 municipalities, ranging from very small (less than 20 inhabitants) to large (over 400 000 inhabitants). A city with more than six hundred thousand to one million inhabitants is lacking, unlike, for example, in the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Belgium or Hungary. In the French-speaking part of Switzerland, la Romandie, the largest … Read more » “Cantonal Family Affair”

An English Affair

11 December 2020

The development of tourism in Switzerland in the second half of the nineteenth century was mainly an English affair. Many famous and well-known personalities had already visited the Confederation in the eighteenth century, whether on their way to Italy and Greece or as scholars, writers, businessmen or politicians. Many visitors wrote about the beauty of … Read more » “An English Affair”