The 1356 Basel earthquake is the most significant seismological event to have occurred in

Central Europe Central Europe is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern Europe, Eastern, Southern Europe, Southern, Western Europe, Western and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Central Europe is known for its cultural diversity; however, countries in ...

recorded history Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world h ...

and had a moment magnitude in the range of 6.0–7.1.Centrale Nucléaire de Fessenheim : appréciation du risque sismique
RÉSONANCE Ingénieurs-Conseils SA, published 2007-09-05, pages 12, 13 This earthquake, which occurred on 18 October 1356, is also known as the Sankt-Lukas-Tag Erdbeben (English: Saint Luke's Day Earthquake), as 18 October is the

feast day The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context does n ...

of Saint

Luke the Evangelist Luke the Evangelist was one of the Four Evangelists—the four traditionally ascribed authors of the canonical gospels. The Early Church Fathers ascribed to him authorship of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Prominent figu ...

Earthquake

After a

foreshock A foreshock is an earthquake that occurs before a larger seismic eventthe mainshockand is related to it in both time and space. The designation of an earthquake as ''foreshock'', ''mainshock'' or aftershock is only possible after the full sequenc ...

between 19:00 and 20:00 local time, the main earthquake struck at around 22:00, and numerous

aftershock In seismology, an aftershock is a smaller earthquake that follows a larger earthquake, in Epicenter, the same area of the Mainshock, main shock, caused as the displaced Crust (geology), crust adjusts to the effects of the main shock. Large earthq ...

s followed through that night.

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

experienced a second, very violent shock in the middle of the night. The town within the ramparts was destroyed by a fire when torches and candles falling to the floor set the wooden houses ablaze. The number of deaths within the town of Basel is estimated at 300. All major churches and castles within a radius of Basel were destroyed. The seismic crisis lasted a year. The modeling of the macroseismic data suggests that the earthquake's source had an east–west orientation, a direction corresponding with the overlapping faults on the Jura Front. On the other hand, recent paleoseismic studies attribute the cause of this earthquake to a

normal fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

, oriented NNE-SSW and south of the town. The significant magnitude of the event suggests a possible extension of this fault under the town.

Location

Due to the limited records of the event, a variety of

epicenter The epicenter (), epicentre, or epicentrum in seismology is the point on the Earth's surface directly above a hypocenter or focus, the point where an earthquake or an underground explosion originates. Determination The primary purpose of a ...

s have been proposed for the earthquake. Some of the proposed locations include faults beneath the

Jura Mountains The Jura Mountains ( ) are a sub-alpine mountain range a short distance north of the Western Alps and mainly demarcate a long part of the French–Swiss border. While the Jura range proper (" folded Jura", ) is located in France and Switzerla ...

or along the Basel-Reinach

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. Due to the similarity, the term '' scarp'' may mistakenly be incorrectly used inte ...

. Another study placed the epicenter south of Basel.

Intensity

The earthquake was felt as far away as

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

Konstanz Konstanz ( , , , ), traditionally known as Constance in English, is a college town, university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the Baden-Württemberg state of south Germany. The city ho ...

, and even in

Île-de-France The Île-de-France (; ; ) is the most populous of the eighteen regions of France, with an official estimated population of 12,271,794 residents on 1 January 2023. Centered on the capital Paris, it is located in the north-central part of the cou ...

. The maximum intensity registered on the

Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale The Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale, also known as the MSK or MSK-64, is a macroseismic intensity scale used to evaluate the severity of ground shaking on the basis of observed effects in an area where an earthquake transpires. The scale was f ...

was IX–X (''Destructive–Devastating''). The macroseismic map was established on the basis of damage reported by the region's 30 to 40 castles.D. Mayer-Rosa and B. Cadiot (1979). "A review of the 1356 Basel earthquake: basic data", ''Tectonophysics'', 53, pp. 325–333. From this macroseismic data, various studies have been conducted to estimate the moment magnitude of the earthquake, which have resulted in various values of 6.2 (BRGM 1998); 6.0 (GEO-TER 2002); 6.9 (SED 2004) with a follow-up report suggesting a range of between 6.7 and 7.1; 6.6 (GFZ 2006); and a major Swiss study by 21 European experts, with American involvement, in which four sub-groups estimated values of 6.9, 6.9, 6.5 to 6.9, and 6.5 ± 0.5 (PEGASOS 2002–2004). There are also different opinions about which faults were involved.

Damage

The

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

destroyed the city of

, Switzerland, near the southern end of the Upper Rhine Graben, and caused much destruction in a vast region extending from

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

. Though major earthquakes are common at the seismically active edges of tectonic plates in Turkey, Greece, and Italy,

intraplate earthquake An intraplate earthquake occurs in the ''interior'' of a Plate tectonics, tectonic plate, in contrast to an interplate earthquake on the ''boundary'' of a tectonic plate. They are relatively rare compared to the more familiar interplate earthqu ...

s are rare events in Central Europe. According to the

Swiss Seismological Service The Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich is the federal agency responsible for monitoring earthquakes in Switzerland and its neighboring countries and for assessing Switzerland's seismic hazard. When an earthquake happens, the SED informs the ...

, of more than 10,000 earthquakes in Switzerland over the past 800 years, only half a dozen of them have registered more than 6.0 on the

Richter scale The Richter scale (), also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale, is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Richter in collaboration with Beno Gutenberg, and pr ...

References

External links

Catholic Encyclopedia article
on the Diocese of Basel makes mentions the earthquake

Preparing a seismic hazard model for Switzerland: The view from PEGASOS Expert Group 3
{{DEFAULTSORT:1356 Basel Earthquake Basel earthquake, 1356 Reinach, Basel-Landschaft 1356 Basel Basel Earthquake, 1356 14th century in Switzerland Earthquakes in Europe Natural disasters in Germany History of Basel