Sankt Chrischona

The church of Sankt Chrischona stands on the Dinkelberg, in the commune of Bettingen, at 522 metres — the highest point in canton Basel-Stadt. The late-Gothic building, its west tower from 1450-1460, choir from 1503-1509 and nave from 1513-1516, occupies the walled former communal cemetery, surrounded by mission buildings built between 1860 and 1929. The tower's viewing platform, reached by 71 steps, opens on clear days onto a panorama of the Vosges, the Black Forest, the Jura and the Alps.

Legend traces the sanctuary to the virgin Christiana, who died returning from a pilgrimage to Rome and is buried here; the legend only takes shape in the 13th-14th centuries and earns Christiana a canonisation in 1504, which launches a popular pilgrimage. A Romanesque church already stood here from the 11th century, with a churchyard where the commune of Bettingen already buried its dead; older place names suggest an earlier building was dedicated to Saint Brictius of Tours. The Reformation of Basel, in 1529, turns Sankt Chrischona into a Reformed church.

Ransacked by Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War, the church declines until it is used as a stable in 1818. Christian Friedrich Spittler obtains permission to restore it in 1839 and founds, the following year, in its sacristy, the Pilgrim Mission of Sankt Chrischona, still active today. His successor Carl Heinrich Rappard establishes there, from 1869, the first evangelical school in the German-speaking world. The city of Basel gives the church to Chrischona International in 1965, on condition that it be renovated and stay open to the public — which the 1974-1975 restoration delivers.

Why this place is remarkable

The highest point in canton Basel-Stadt, this late-Gothic church saw a medieval pilgrimage, then a stable in 1818, before becoming in 1840 the cradle of an evangelical mission that still occupies its former cemetery and the buildings around it.

History and origin

A first building may already have stood on this height in the 7th century, enlarged in the 8th-9th centuries and then rebuilt in Romanesque style around the year 1000. The legend of the virgin Chrischona only takes shape in the 13th-14th centuries, ahead of the 1504 canonisation. The current building, tower from 1450-1460, choir from 1503-1509 and nave from 1513-1516, passes to the Reformation in 1529; a bell cast in 1625 by Martin Hofmann in Basel still rings in its tower.