This Basel villa was once home to the founder of the Swiss National Park

Though named for its architect Eduard Preiswerk, this Basel villa has another historic accolade: it was home to naturalist Dr Paul Sarasin, instigator of the Swiss National Park.

The 300 sq m neo-gothic home dates from 1902 and was home to the Sarasin family from 1919 onwards. A Basel academic and ethnologist, Dr Sarasin was involved in the creation of the first Central Europe National Park, Val Cluozza, in 1914 and spent his life advocating for global nature conservation. At the age of 62, he married Anna Maria Hohenester in 1918, and the couple raised their two children in the home on the corner of Missionsstrasse and Maiengasse – an area that is now largely home to 1970s mid-rise apartment blocks.

Photography: Pierre Kellenberger

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In 2021, the current owners enlisted Austrian practice Artec to renovate and refresh the fin-de-siècle Basel property, polishing its historic bones and reimaging some of its spaces as modern contrasts. The firm had free reign over three of its residential floors. Many rooms embrace their roots, most obviously the warm wood panelling, complemented by a rich Farrow & Ball colour scheme of avocado and moss greens on the ground floor that create a synergy with the property’s gardens, while others are a radical reinvention. The first-floor kitchen, for example, is freestanding with stainless steel cabinets and equipment and mirrored cabinet fronts, adding a contemporary gloss.

Heavy wooden doors are original, as is the curving neo-baroque staircase, which connects across four flights of stairs and mezzanines, crowned by contemporary lighting. An assemblage of midcentury Italian and modernist furniture adds to the cross-century dialogue.

The renovation won praise from the cantonal monument-preservation authority of Basel-Stad, which called it an ‘Exciting dialogue between restoration and contemporary reinterpretation.’

Poetic Walls is marketing Basel property for CHF 3.6m (approximately €3.76m).