There's a lot to like about Switzerland's third-largest, yet most overlooked, city. Basel is a bustling, working city with an agreeable buzz, lack of pretension, excellent museums and influences from both France and Germany.

It has an attractive old town too, which isn't just a historical relic but a lived in, shopped in, vital part of the city centre.

But forget all that. When European cathedrals and castles start to pall, head to Basel for this reason alone: it's a hotbed of architectural innovation, and home to some of the continent's best contemporary buildings.

Pick up an Architecture in Basel brochure from the tourism office or hire a guide to provide sightseeing with insight.

My guide, Rudolf Suter, soon has me off on a design adventure.

"Basel is conservative in so many ways, but not in architecture," he observes.

"Since the 1990s you could say it has gone a bit wild. There's a lot of pharmaceutical money washing around; what else to spend it on?"

Our first stop is at the Children's Hospital on Spitalstrasse, completed in 2010. Its architects were competition-winning local company Stump & Schibli, scarcely known at the time.

The facade changes colour depending on the angle of the light. As we walk along the street it turns from yellow to orange but, when I look back, the hospital is bright green. It's an effect achieved through multiple layering of surfaces that refract light, but there's nothing pretentious about it, and two giant rabbits peer from windows.

Across the intersection, the university's Pharmaceutical Institute appears to be covered in a jade-green slab which reveals itself as individual green dots on a semi-transparent background, like a giant pill package.

It's our first encounter with Herzog & De Meuron. The Basel firm notably designed the Tate Modern in London and Allianz Arena in Munich, but soared into the architectural stratosphere with its bird's nest stadium in Beijing. Herzog & De Meuron cleverness is found all across Basel, from the striking copper-clad signal box you see when arriving by train to the dramatic, irregular green-tiled roof of the Museum of Cultures extension, a contemporary response to the mediaeval tiles of the old town.

For the best of Basel's new architecture, however, we cross the Rhine to Kleinbasel, a Swiss enclave on the otherwise German side of the river. Here Herzog & De Meuron is constructing an uninteresting-looking tower block for pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-La Roche that, at 175 metres, will (perhaps rather laughably) be Switzerland's tallest building.

An amble down the riverfront brings us to a more notable edifice, Museum Tinguely, designed by Swiss-Italian Mario Botta. It has cliff-like walls and huge glass panels looking onto the Rhine.

On to the Foundation Beyeler, an outstanding private collection of modern art from the likes of Pollock, Warhol and Rothko, as well as Swiss greats Klee and Giacometti. Italian architect Renzo Piano designed the semi-sunken, glass-roofed building, which sails like an avant-garde ship across a pond-scattered garden.

You have to nip across the border to the German town of Weil-am-Rhein - in all but name a suburb of Basel - for another museum dazzler.

Vitra Design Museum, a brainchild of Frank Gehry, is a deconstructed clump of ramps, blocks and towers in Cubist white. It's only one of many startling buildings on the campus of Swiss furniture-maker Vitra, which you can visit on daily public tours in English. Its various assembly plants and administrative buildings show the talents of architects such as Jean Prouve, Alvaro Siza and Tadao Ando.

Check out the stacked gabled oblongs of the VitraHaus (Herzog & de Meuron) and the angular and futuristic Fire Station (from British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid) once described as a "frozen explosion".

Back in Kleinbasel another significant Basel company, healthcare giant Novartis, also has a design-rich campus, though far less accessibility. It only has public tours every second Saturday, and Suter and I are resigned to peering through the security fences.

Still, we get a good look at a building covered in a skin of coloured glass panels by local architects Diener & Diener, which is a nod to the origins of the company, which began making dyes for Basel's silk industry.

Its different thickness and hues make the building seem blurred, like a hastily painted watercolour.

We also see Frank Gehry's cloud-like building, the only structure on campus that isn't rectangular. "Though I'm not sure if you can open the windows," says Suter glumly.

Maybe not, but you can't open windows in a cathedral either. And when you've had enough of those, Basel's buildings are a refreshing burst of fresh architectural energy.

The writer travelled courtesy Basel Tourism and Etihad Airways.

GETTING THERE

Etihad flies to Abu Dhabi with onward connections to Zurich an hour from Basel by train. Phone 1300 532 215, see etihad.com.

STAYING THERE

The Passage is sleek, designer-simple, conveniently located and has outstandingly helpful staff. Rooms cost from $210 a night including breakfast. See thepassage.ch.

EATING THERE

Volkshaus Basel has a restaurant recently redesigned by Herzog & de Meuron serving brasserie-style dishes, and has an extensive wine list. See volkshaus-basel.ch.

TRIP NOTES MORE

INFORMATION

basel.com;

myswitzerland.com.