Basel

Did you know that Basel was the first town to give the public access to a museum? Basel is a centre of culture with a long tradition: it has the world\'s oldest art collection open to the public since 1671, and an arts-loving population that decided by referendum to buy a number of Picassos paintings for the Kunstmuseum (Museum of Fine Arts) in 1967. Today, no other European city can boast such a high density of top-class museums with nearly 40 museums in an area of only 37 square kilometres. A main theatre and 25 smaller ones, up to 1,000 classical concerts as well as the first \'House of Literature\' in Switzerland round off the cultural picture.