Basel is synonymous with art and culture. It’s the city with the highest density of museums in Switzerland. But Basel is also a big open-air art gallery.

Philipp Brogli is promoter and curator in the art world. You could call him a bridge-builder between urban artists and the people who decide what to do with the city’s grey walls. 

Thanks to Philipp Brogli’s network, walls, brickwork and substation facades all over Basel have undergone a beauty treatment with spray cans, paintbrushes, rollers or marker pens. Graffiti is not just mindless vandalism – something more and more people are recognising thanks to Brogli’s work. And the more recognition these artworks receive, the more urban artists of international renown flock to Basel. A case in point: Basel’s inner city now has it’s own, impressive piece by The London Police.

The artist known as Invader is a true great of his genre. His Space Invaders can be found on numerous walls and facades across the city. Two dozen of the Parisian street art icon’s mosaics are dotted around Basel. The works depict the baddies in the Space Invaders computer game, which the artist uses to invade cities around the world and leave his mark. 

Another big name in the world of urban street art is TIKA, a Swiss street and graffiti artist with a penchant for large surfaces. Her works have gained her international recognition, and one – a massive cockerel – features on a big wall at Heuwaage. As the artworks can be hard to find and many pass by them without noticing them, Philipp Brogli has come up with a number of urban art tours. 

The hotspots of urban art

Basel tours

So in a sense, Philipp Brogli’s tours are real eye-openers. His latest one, a special project entitled “Urban Art Experience”, connects – builds bridges between – a number of different works, styles and canvasses. The tour takes participants past various artfully adorned facades and stops outside the renowned Museum Tinguely, from where participants can jump into the Rhine and float downriver (in summer only).

The tour also takes in Basel’s port, where a temporary cultural home for creatives has been established, offering space for experimentation.

There’s something else that makes the Urban Art Experience tour special: its partnership with five-star hotel Les Trois Rois. Urban art enthusiasts can ask to be chauffeured from one highlight to the next in the Hotel Les Trois Rois’s Bentley – a Bentley like no other: not sleek and black, but covered in graffiti. 

The Bentley is proof that in Basel, the sky’s the limit, and the lines between history, tradition and modernity, between established and recent art, are blurred in this city that straddles the borders of three countries.