Being Victorian does not require a Queen Victoria. Where medieval landmarks are concerned, the Swiss went through the same let’s-rebuild-it-bigger-and-add-battlements phase as their British counterparts around the turn of the 20th century.
In Basel’s Marketplatz, you’ll find an imposing red building with three generous arches, false battlements, a tall clock tower on the left, and murals of an imaginary Germanic antiquity all across the front. This is the City Hall, built in the early 1500s to commemorate the independent township of Basel’s entrance into the Swiss Confederation…and then demolished and reconstructed in 1901 with the addition of battlements and a clock tower.
