Contact
Get in Touch
Contact details
Call us
+41 61 313 05 80
Email us
office@ela-basel.ch
Postal address
ELABasel, Gartenstrasse 93, 4052 Basel, Switzerland
Visit us
Book a tour or contact the office. Please note ELABasel does not ordinarily accept unannounced visitors.
ELABasel is located in central Basel.
ELABasel’s Early Years building at Gartenstrasse 93.
Our Early Years building is located 4 minutes from Bahnhof SBB, Basel’s main transport hub.
Our Primary and Secondary campus are 4 minutes from Aeschenplatz, a centrally-located tram hub.
You can see the exact location of our sites in Basel Stadt below.
Early Years Facilities
Ulmenhof (or Elms Court) is the historical name of our Early Years building in the heart of Basel. It is a beautiful mansion that radiates Swiss charm and character. It has been sympathetically renovated to create a fit-for-purpose Early Years learning environment.
It has large rooms for our Babies, Toddlers and Pre-School children as well as a room with soft play equipment and a multi-purpose room used for musical movement and other activities.
There is a secure internal garden that the children can use under supervision throughout their day.
How to Get Here – Gartenstrasse 93
ELABasel operates at two different locations in Basel’s historic city centre.
Our Early Years campus is located at Gartenstrasse 93, a few minutes walk from Basel’s transport hub at Bahnhof SBB.
From here, it is a ten minute walk (850m) to our Primary campus at St Alban’s Vorstadt 32.
You can also navigate to ELABasel Early Years at Gartenstrasse 93 using the links below:
By Tram or Bus
From the Airport
By Train
By Car
By Tram or Bus
Basel has an extensive tram and bus network. Basel-Stadt’s green city trams and buses are operated by BVB. All tickets are also valid on Basel-Land’s yellow trams and buses, operated by BLT.
- Tickets are bought in advance at any of the ticket machines located at each stop.
- Ticket machines offer English language instructions.
- If you select your destination on the ticket machine, you will be sold the appropriate standard one-way ticket.
- Tickets allow you to travel in the ‘same general direction away from the start point’, changing trams/buses as you need, for a fixed time (one hour for a standard city ticket). You can see detailed information on BVB’s single journey tickets and prices page here (external site)
- Most machines have suspended coin operation for the time being, and offer card-only payment.
- There is no need to validate standard tickets, or show them on boarding. Keep your ticket in case a ticket inspector boards.
The closest stop to Gartenstrasse is Bahnhof SBB (the Swiss Federal Railway’s train station), though Aeschenplatz is a close second.
You can see a plan of Basel’s public transport network by clicking here (external site). Basel SBB (Bahnhof SBB) is at the centre of the plan.
You can open BVB’s journey planner by clicking here (external site).
From the Airport
Euroairport is located in France, northwest of Basel: a customs road links the airport directly to Basel.
By bus
At peak times there is a shuttle bus (Line 50) every nine minutes for the 15 minute journey from EuroAirport to Bahnhof SBB.
You can see the timetable for the bus here.
- Make sure you leave the airport through the Swiss side.
- The bus stop is very close to the main exit from the Arrivals level.
- Buy your ticket in advance from the ticket machine at the bus stop. The 3-zone ticket will cost around 6 CHF (4 CHF for under 16)
- Most machines have suspended coin operation for the time being, and offer card-only payment.
- There is no need to validate standard tickets, or show them on boarding. Keep your ticket in case a ticket inspector boards.
- The shuttle moves quickly along the bendy customs road into Basel: we recommend you find a seat.
By taxi
Taxis are often available at the rank opposite the main exit from the Arrivals level.
- Swiss taxis can only take you to Switzerland: leave the airport by the EU exit if you need to travel to France or Germany before ELA Basel.
- Taxis are often no faster than the shuttle bus.
- Expect to pay 50 CHF to travel to central Basel or around 30 CHF if you use UBER.
- Most taxis accept Swiss francs, Euros, and cards.
By Train
Bahnhof SBB is Basel’s main train station, connecting to most of the Swiss network and French railways.
Connections to the German network are through Basel Badischer Bahnhof, the Deutsche Bahn operated station, north of the Rhein.
There are frequent connections across the city to Bahnhof SBB, by bus, train or tram.
By Car
Basel does not encourage car use in the historic city centre: public transport is often faster and less expensive.
To drive to ELABasel we recommend the use of GPS navigation with voice: like many cities, Basel has one-way systems that are not intuitive to navigate.
Street parking is
- often difficult to find
- paid for through multi-bay parking meters that require Swiss coins (no change given), and
- for short term only (30 or 90 minutes)
For ELA Basel we would recommend parking in the lower levels (P1, P2, P3) of the underground Bahnhof SBB car park.
- Located at Gartenstrasse 150, 4052 Basel, access is via Nauenstrasse from either direction.
- The car park uses variable (peak and off-peak) rates: you can see the hourly rates at the car-park website here (external site).
Primary and Secondary Facilities
The Primary School children from Reception to Year 7 attend school in another spacious historic mansion on St. Alban-Vorstadt, in a quiet neighbourhood of historic homes in the heart of the old city. The school building is situated one street behind the river Rhine and is approximately a ten-minute walk from our Early Years and Lower Primary location. It is a protected building that has been sympathetically renovated to accommodate all the academic needs of our children.
The building also benefits from a music hall, a science room, language classrooms, a fitness and movement hall, a kitchen for our daily hot-lunch service and a suite of libraries for the children’s use.
An attractive internal courtyard provides the opportunity for children to go outside and play games at lunchtime and breaktime
How to Get Here – St. Alban-Vorstadt 32
ELABasel operates at two different locations in central historic Basel.
Our Primary campus is located at St Alban-Vorstadt 32, five minutes walk from Aeschenplatz.
From here, it is a ten minute walk (850m) to our Early Years located at Gartenstrasse 93, close to Bahnhof SBB.
You can also navigate to ELABasel Primary, St Alban-Vorstadt 32 using the links below:
By Tram or Bus
From the Airport
By Train
By Car
By Tram or Bus
Basel has an extensive tram and bus network. The green city trams and buses are operated by BVB.
- Tickets are bought in advance at any of the ticket machines located at each stop.
- Ticket machines offer English language instructions.
- If you select your destination on the ticket machine, you will be sold the appropriate standard ticket.
- Tickets allow you to travel in the ‘same general direction away from the start point’, changing trams/buses as you need, for a fixed time (one hour for a standard city ticket). You can see detailed information on BVB’s single journey tickets and prices page here (external site).
- Most machines have suspended coin operation for the time being, and offer card-only payment.
- There is no need to validate standard tickets, or show them on boarding. Keep your ticket in case a ticket inspector boards.
The closest stop to at Alban-Vorstadt is Aeschenplatz, one stop from Bahnhof SBB. A map showing the best route on foot from Aeschenplatz to the Primary site is shown above
You can see a plan of Basel’s public transport network by clicking here (external site).
Basel SBB (Bahnof SBB) is at the centre of the plan, connected to Aeschenplatz by the 8, 10, and 11 tram lines.
You can open BVB’s journey planner by clicking here (external site).
From the Airport
Euroairport is located in France, north west of Basel. A customs road links the airport to Basel.
By bus
At peak times there is a shuttle bus (Line 50) every nine minutes for the 15 minute journey from Euroairport to Bahnhof SBB.
You can see the timetable for the bus here.
- Make sure you leave the airport through the Swiss side.
- The bus stop is very close to the main exit from the Arrivals level.
- Buy your ticket before boarding from the ticket machine at the airport bus stop. A 3-zone ticket will cost around 6 CHF (4 CHF for under 16)
- Most machines have suspended coin operation for the time being, and offer card-only payment.
- There is no need to validate standard tickets, or show them on boarding. Keep your ticket in case a ticket inspector boards.
- The shuttle moves quickly along the bendy customs road into Basel: we recommend you find a seat.
Our Upper Primary site is a twelve minute walk from Bahnhoff SBB. You can take the tram part of the way, travelling one stop from Bahnhoff SBB to Aeschenplatz: you will not need an additional tram ticket if you paid for the airport shuttle bus. Trams to Aeschenplatz are frequent.
- 8 (green tram) direction Weil am Rhein, Wiesenplatz, or Kleinhüningen
- 10 (yellow tram) direction Rodorsdorf, Flüh Bahnhof or Ettingen Bahnhof
- 11 (yellow tram) direction Saint-Louis Grenze
By taxi
Taxis are often available at the rank opposite main exit from the Arrivals level.
- Swiss taxis can only take you to Switzerland: leave the airport by the EU exit if you need to travel to France or Germany before ELA Basel.
- Taxis are often no faster than the shuttle bus.
- Expect to pay 50 CHF to travel to central Basel.
- Most taxis accept Swiss francs, Euros, and cards.
By Train
Bahnhof SBB is Basel’s principle train station, connecting to most of the Swiss network and French railways.
The closest stop to St. Albans-Vorstadt is Aeschenplatz, one stop from Bahnhof SBB.
Connections to the German network are through Basel Badischer Bahnhof, the Deutsche Bahn operated station, north of the Rhein. There are frequent connections across the city to Bahnhof SBB, by train or tram.
The closest stop to St Albans-Vorstadt is Aeschenplatz, one stop from Bahnhof SBB.
You can see a plan of Basel’s public transport network by clicking here (external site).
Basel SBB (Bahnof SBB) is at the centre of the plan, connected to Aeschenplatz by the 8, 10, and 11 tram lines.
You can open BVB’s journey planner by clicking here (external site).
By Car
Basel does not encourage car use in the historic city centre: public transport is often faster and less expensive .
To drive to ELABasel we would recommend the use of GPS navigation with voice: like many cities, Basel has one way systems that are not intuitive to navigate.
Street parking around St Albans-Vorstadt is
- often very difficult to find
- paid for through multi-bay parking meters that require Swiss coins (no change given), and
- for short term only (30 or 90 minutes)
For ELABasel’s Upper Primary site we would recommend parking in a central car park, then using public transport or walking.
You can see Basel-Stadt’s parking website here (external site). Aeschen parking, close to the SBB to Aeschenplatz tram stop, is the closest to the St Albans-Vorstadt 32 Upper Primary site. A map showing the route on foot from the Aeschenplatz tram stop to the Upper Primary site is shown above.
Navigate Between the Two Locations
There’s an 11-minute walk between our two campuses.
Direction maps from Early Years to Primary
Google maps »
Bing maps »
Direction maps from Primary to Early Years
Google maps »
Bing maps »
