Sobre este lugar
On Theaterplatz, just south of the old town's busy squares, sits one of Basel's most beloved and unusual monuments. The Fasnachtsbrunnen, universally known as the Tinguely Fountain, was created by Jean Tinguely and completed in 1977. It occupies the exact footprint of the old city theatre's stage, which was demolished in the mid nineteen seventies, and Tinguely welded his ten sculptures partly from scrap and props salvaged from that dismantled building. The black-painted iron figures, each with its own name and character, are driven by low-pressure pumps so that they endlessly spin, rock, wave, and spray dark water into the air. Named after Basel's world-famous Fasnacht carnival, the fountain captures the anarchic, joyful energy of the city in permanent motion, and in deep winter, when the spray freezes over the moving machines, it transforms into a glittering sculpture of ice.
Datos clave
- 10 sculptures — Black iron machines clatter and spray across the shallow basin
- 1977 year — Tinguely completed the fountain on the old theatre's former stage
- 50 anniversary — The Migros cooperative gifted it to Basel to mark its jubilee
📍 Theaterplatz, 4010, Basel