Basle (or Basel), in Switzerland, is a city divided by the river Rhine. The old town features many significant buildings including the Romanesque and Gothic Münster, a late Gothic town hall, and three medieval city gates. It is also the home of Switzerland's oldest university. Ruskin 's visits to Basle included those made in 1835, 1841, 1856, 1858, 1860, 1861, 1862 and 1863. Ruskin describes it, when he first knew it, as one of Europe's most venerable cities 'in its mingling of simple Swiss manner of building with the plain Burgundian Gothic of the fifteenth century' ( Works, 35.636). In Modern Painters he refers to a drawing of Turner 's which he compares unfavourably with Turner's British drawings.