Along the Rheingasse embankment in Basel's Kleinbasel quarter, where plane trees shade the broad stone steps that locals use as an open-air riverbank on warm evenings, a cream-painted nineteenth-century building with gilded lettering faces directly across the Rhine toward the Münster and the medieval roofline of Grossbasel. Hotel Krafft has held this position since 1872, and its greatest design asset has never changed: the view. A sensitive renovation directed by local architects gave the 60-room property a contemporary interior language without disturbing the bones of the Belle Époque structure, preserving the arched windows of the first-floor restaurant — a tall, light-filled room where Flos 2097 chandeliers hang from plaster-moulded ceilings above ebonised bistro chairs and white linen — as the building's most architecturally eloquent space. The guest rooms balance two registers: lower floors retain polished cherry-wood headboards, warm oak parquet, and a palette of burgundy and cream that defers to the period fabric, while upper attic rooms shift toward a more stripped-back Scandinavian calm, with taupe walls, dark-stained timber floors, and Tolix-style red café chairs on the private terraces. Throughout, the furniture references mid-century Swiss and German modernism — cantilever lounge chairs in caramel wool, tripod floor lamps, compact writing desks in dark walnut — kept deliberately quiet so that the Rhine, framed through every arched window and sliding door, does the work that no amount of interior decoration could improve upon.

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