The Haus zum Kirschgarten was built between 1775 and 1780 for the silk ribbon manufacturer and colonel Johann Rudolf Burckhardt. This house has served as a residential museum since 1951.

Built between 1775 and 1780, the Haus zum Kirschgarten marks a high point of secular architecture from the Louis-Seize period on the Upper Rhine. For a merchant's residence in Basel, it displays an unusual standard. The finely structured sandstone façade with the three-axis portico, the passageway with domed columns and the spacious staircase are remarkable. The builder was Johann Rudolf Burckhardt, a silk ribbon manufacturer who was only 25 years old at the time. In the even younger Ulrich Büchel-Fatio, he found a Basel architect who was oriented towards the latest tastes. Johann Rudolf Burckhardt retired to his country estate as early as 1797. Repeated changes of ownership until it became a museum (designated in 1933, opened in 1951) resulted in the loss of the inventory and changes to the room layout.

As a result, the current state only gives a fragmentary picture of the original interior of the town palace. The main sequence of rooms with staircase, forecourt and large drawing room, each with stucco wall decoration, the former library on the first floor and three rooms on the second floor, namely the green panelled room, Burckhardt's bedchamber and the rose boudoir dated 1780, have been preserved. However, all rooms are without their original movable furnishings, which are also not documented. The exhibition concept continues the first Basel residential museum in the Segerhof. This merchant's residence, which Mrs. Marie Burckhardt had bequeathed to the city with its inventory in 1923, was demolished in 1934. The quasi-authentic example of a Basel family's home furnishings was not completely lost. Four rooms from the Segerhof were saved in whole or in part for the museum: the visiting room, the dining room, the gray hall and the kitchen (all on the second floor).

Guided tours and school classes:
+41 61 205 86 70
vermittlung.hmb@bs.ch

Event information:
+41 61 205 86 02


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.