Birsig
tributary of the Rhine
The Birsig (German pronunciation: [ˈbɪʁzɪç]) is a rather small river in eastern France and northern Switzerland. Its source is in the village Biederthal, in the French Haut-Rhin department, near the Swiss border. The Birsig is about 21 kilometres (13 mi) long, and its watershed area is about 82 square kilometres (32 mi2). It flows variably through Swiss and French territory and through the Birsig Valley. Afterwards it passes the city of Basel, where it enters the Rhine (left bank).
The river Birsig originally flowed openly through Basel, but the river was long ago channelled and its banks built up to prevent water damage to the houses. The river flowed directly along the houses in the lower part of the city, where many bridges were built over. It took the fecal waste from the houses and was therefore called "the city's big cloaca", which favoured the outbreak of cholera and typhus.
Nowadays the Birsig is covered over for most of its course in Basel; there are just a few hundred meters around the city zoo where the Birsig can be seen openly.
“Birsig” enters the record as tributary of the Rhine. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Birsig, tributary and Rhine can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q572072. VIAF identifies the subject as 242298250. Authority coordinates are 47.560, 7.588. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Birsig” 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.