Zoo Basel
zoo in Basel, Switzerland
Zoo Basel is a zoological garden in the city of Basel, Switzerland. Its official name is Zoologischer Garten Basel — or in English: Basel Zoological Garden. Basel residents affectionately call it Zolli. Its main entrance is just outside Basel's city centre and extends in the Birsig stream valley to Basel's city border with Binningen, Basel-Country. The zoo has over 500 animal species from all seven continents.
Zoo Basel is Switzerland's oldest (1874) and largest zoo by number of animals. In 2024 it got over 1.2 million visitors.
Zoo Basel was ranked as one of the fifteen best zoos in the world by Forbes Traveler in 2008 and in 2009 as the seventh best in Europe by Anthony Sheridan from the Zoological Society of London.
The zoo had the first Indian rhinoceros birth in a zoo, as well as the first greater flamingo hatch. It has had repeated breeding success with animals including cheetahs (18 births), okapi (22), pygmy hippopotamuses (53), and flamingos (over 400 hatches).
The public source identifies “Zoo Basel” as zoo in Basel, Switzerland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Basel and Switzerland.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q220009. VIAF identifies the subject as 144217199. The Library of Congress control number is n50069516. Authority coordinates are 47.547, 7.579. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1874, 2024, 2008 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zoo Basel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.