It is 32 degrees in Basel. On the bridge people are eating ice cream, while below it swimmers keep surfacing as they drift along in the Rhine. In Basel you are allowed to swim in the river, despite international freight shipping and other leisure activities.
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“Part of the river in the city centre is marked out with buoys,” Tim Edler tells Euronews. Swimmers, leisure users and shipping all share the same stretch of water here. Edler is co-founder of Flussbad Berlin, an association that wants to make the Spree in Berlin safe for swimming. He was recently in Basel for the Swimmable Cities European Forum. The aim of this network is to make urban waterways accessible again and clean enough for bathing.
And in Basel that is already reality, “one of the city’s central features”, as Edler puts it. The Swiss city is widely regarded as the Mecca of river swimming in major cities. “For many people who live and work here, the Rhine is an important part of their everyday lives,” says Conradin Cramer, president of the Basel cantonal government, speaking to SRF.
River bathing is not a gift of nature
In mid-August around 4,500 people showed how it is done. Edler also took part in the Rhine swim, an annual event in Basel. The approximately two-kilometre course runs downstream from Kleinbasel to the Johanniter Bridge. Safe bathing is made possible by clear rules and good information, explains Christoph Bosshardt, head of Basel’s location marketing, speaking to SRF.
Clean water alone is not enough. “Showers, steps, entry points, rescue plans and clear rules are just as important,” Bosshardt tells the Swiss media company. In Basel the infrastructure along the Rhine has been systematically expanded over many years.
After a major fire in 1986 at a Basel chemical factory warehouse, not only chemicals but also tonnes of toxic fire-fighting water flowed into the Rhine. What followed was an ecocide – and a rethink about how the river should be used in future. Basel does not have a clean, swimmable Rhine by chance; it has worked towards it over decades. Edler also says: “This is something you can achieve through persistent, focused change.”
Why the Rhine is swimmable in Basel but not in Cologne or Düsseldorf
Edler, who also wants to introduce swimming in Berlin’s Spree, sees the core problem in the way waterways are managed. “The most important prerequisite that exists in Basel is not water quality, riverbanks, ports or facilities; it is the willingness to allow people to use the river on their own responsibility,” says Edler.
Because in Basel too people are well aware that the Rhine has strong currents and, as a fast-flowing river, entails risks. The city and the Basel section of the Swiss Life Saving Society (SLRG) provide maps showing the safe areas.
On the website (source in German) of the City of Basel you can find information on water level and temperature. The water should be at least 18 degrees Celsius, you should always swim with others, and you should not leave the marked swimming areas. So in Basel there is a clear awareness that river swimming involves dangers.
“The authorities and politicians are not there to shield people completely from these dangers, but should instead create the conditions that allow them to deal with them in an appropriate way,” Edler believes. For him, concrete information and clear rules are a better option than bans.
Basel lies where Switzerland, France and Germany meet. Here the Rhine even marks the immediate border. If you were to swim a few hundred metres further from Basel, “then you swim into France, where it is banned, and across the river in Germany it is banned as well,” Edler tells Euronews. It is, of course, the same river, but it is perceived differently.
Why is river bathing failing in Germany?
In Germany, the Rhine is still a long way from becoming a giant public swimming pool. Almost 500 kilometres north of Basel lies Cologne. Here, and in neighbouring Düsseldorf, bathing and swimming in the Rhine are strictly prohibited throughout the city area. Anyone who ignores this faces fines of up to 1,000 euros.
The bans have been in force in these major cities since late summer 2025. Cologne cites numerous fatal bathing accidents as the reason. “The Rhine is particularly dangerous because you cannot see the whirlpools and suction effects, which are caused among other things by ships,” the city explains. Düsseldorf and other riverside cities have issued similar bans.
Edler, however, asks why swimming is so dangerous in the first place. The Rhine in particular has been dedicated to shipping, with the riverbed modified in places. To that end, so-called groynes or training walls have been built – gravel banks or stone walls jutting into the water. It is here in particular that currents develop with a suction effect towards the navigation channel.
“If people fall into the water from one of these groynes that stick out into the river, they are automatically in an area of deadly whirlpools,” Edler also warns. “It is really extremely dangerous,” he says, and considers a bathing ban sensible for the time being. In the longer term, however, he argues against it: “The question is, after all, these groynes did not just fall from the sky.”
Shipping has priority in Germany
“First and foremost we have an administration that develops the river in inner-city areas solely according to the principles of optimising it for shipping,” Edler explains. In many large German cities the Rhine is not suitable for bathing because it is designed purely for economic use.
“It is scandalous that these bans are not linked to a requirement to improve the situation,” says Edler. For him, the bathing ban is not the real problem. Rather, the problem is that dangerous riverbank conditions have been created and then swimming is simply banned.
In Edler’s view, any ban should have been accompanied by conditions directed at the managers of the Rhine, in this case the federal government: “[Swimming] has to be banned, but in five years’ time, dear federal government, you must have redesigned the riverbank so that we can let people back in,” is Edler’s proposal to the federal authorities.
In fact, especially within Cologne’s city limits there used to be several bathing sites. “The municipal administrative report lists for the year 1913 in Cologne a total of six public riverbank bathing facilities, five river bathing establishments and one beach pool,” the city explained. The areas where swimming was permitted were fenced off and secured. Today, the authorities are again looking for locations where exceptions might be possible. These assessments will take a while.
Historically evolved, now frozen in place
The conflict between shipping, managed by the Federal Ministry of Transport, and society’s desire to use rivers for bathing also exists in Berlin. Here in particular Edler is sharply critical of the bathing ban: “The Spree in Berlin is a river where you can really say it no longer serves transport at all, but recreation.”
According to Edler, the Spree and the Spree Canal are managed with the wrong basic assumption, namely that they should primarily be shipping lanes. A blanket ban on bathing applies. The Spree is still a federal waterway and is also used by cargo vessels. In inner-city Berlin, however, traditional freight transport plays a relatively minor role. Today it is passenger and leisure shipping that dominate.
The Senate states, for example, that passenger shipping accounts for around 60 percent of the CO² emissions from inland shipping in Berlin. If a significant part of today’s use is local and tourism-related, Edler asks whether the Berlin stretch of the Spree should still be managed with the same priorities as an important supra-regional freight corridor.
“The blanket ban in force in Berlin blocks any projects, any initiatives, any positive development of the waterway,” says Edler, who sees potential for public bathing areas in the Spree. Through his association Flussbad Berlin he wants to draw attention to this and calls for monthly protest swims (source in German), including again on 20 August. With the campaign for the state parliament elections in full swing, party representatives are also present.
Edler talks about funding of up to one million euros that cannot be used because the blanket ban blocks a pilot project. “We have, for example, specific funding for a pilot bathing site in the Spree Canal, where there is no longer any shipping,” says Edler. “But this investment cannot be realised because swimming in the Spree Canal is prohibited.” The ban removes both the political and practical incentive to create the conditions for safe bathing in the first place.
Yet the funds are part of the Integrated Urban Development Concept (ISEK) for Berlin’s Mitte district. Its aim is to upgrade the historic centre. But the administration comes up against limits in implementation, where the Senate and ultimately the federal level would also have to be involved in decision-making.
Edler is frustrated by the standstill. “If, as a society, we fail to develop the idea that water in the city is public space that belongs to people, it is almost impossible to push through projects in this direction.” Yet he is sure that river swimming will sooner or later take hold in many German cities too.
It is already on the agenda in all affluent, developed regions, especially in European cities. For instance, an event organised by Swimmable Cities (source in German), which also hosted the forum in Basel, has already taken place in Rotterdam. There have also been discussions in the context of the Olympic Games in Paris, as well as in London and Amsterdam.
River swimming as a European trend
“We still have to make this shift in awareness here,” says Edler. “All the other prerequisites – hygiene standards, shipping and so on – are solvable problems.” Across Europe, however, public use of waterways – especially in cities – is only a matter of time. “It is no longer acceptable for the river running through the middle of these cities to be essentially a toxic sewer; instead people want to experience and use the river as public space,” Edler makes clear.
In Paris this summer, people are allowed to swim in the Canal Saint-Martin on Sunday afternoons. Lifeguards are also on duty at these times. “The atmosphere on site was very relaxed and all sorts of people come together,” explains Janett Koch, who is also a member of the Flussbad Berlin association.
“The water was very pleasant and smelled fine. I had plenty of space to swim,” is how Koch describes her experience. You do have to swim in a bit of a zigzag. “It was a real blessing to be able to cool off on a hot day with temperatures above 30°C. Afterwards you get back on the Metro with a spring in your step,” Koch adds.
Access to the canal is easy, she says. “On the Canal Saint-Martin all you need are a few ropes to demarcate the bathing zone and a pontoon with ladders.” There is also a forecasting system for water quality. “From my point of view, Paris could easily allow these swimming activities to continue beyond July and August,” is Koch’s conclusion.
