This German-speaking municipality of almost 21,500 inhabitants is located in the half-canton of Basel-City and is part of the suburb of Basel. The Rhine metropolis, to which it is connected by tram, is 6 km as the crow flies. Riehen is located on the border with the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The historic city center has kept the appearance of a large village, but Riehen is the most populous municipality in this region of Switzerland after Basel. The city's businesses are mainly SMEs. Many of those who live in this pretty city work in Basel or in the greater Basel area. For its exemplary energy policy, Riehen was the first municipality in the region to receive the "European Energy Award Gold" which guarantees a good quality of life for its inhabitants and particularly for families, since it also received the Unicef prize. of “Child Friendly Community”. To see: the Beyeler foundation (private painting collection) as well as the buildings of the “Neues Bauen”, an architectural trend from the 1920s / 1930s. More recently contemporary architects like Renzo Piano, Herzog & De Meuron, Zaha Hadid along with others have expressed their talent to Riehen.
Riehen calls itself a “big green village”. The city is indeed the lung of Greater Basel with its many public parks (the Wenkenhof, Sarasin Park, the Bäumlihof estate park and the Wettstein complex) and its immense space for walking and relaxation (the Landschaftspark Wiese) which extends well beyond the limits of the municipality. In this highly urbanized region, some agricultural land and a small vineyard are still part of the territory and help give it this image of a large village. Riehen has the reputation of an "artist town", several artist studios and private galleries carry on the tradition. If we had to define Riehen in one word it would surely be that of meetings: artistic and cultural in the various museums, debates (very followed) in the public square, weekly markets with local and regional products and finally, recently, a magnificent natural swimming pool built at the foot of the hill on the edge of the Wiese Nature Park, an ideal setting for sports and relaxation. Basel being one of the 10 cities in the world offering the best quality of life, real estate prices are in the upper middle of Switzerland. Riehen offers an equivalent quality of life and real estate prices are hardly lower.