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Zurich: the city of lakes and the Alps

Detalhes da rota

Distância da rota

14.6 km

Duração do percurso

3 h 43 m

Pontos de Percurso

Guia de áudio

Disponível

Línguas

Antevisão da Rota de Áudio

Zurich is often imagined as a city of banks and watches. But it is worth walking through it - and the picture changes.

The route begins in the Zurich-West area, where former industrial buildings have been transformed into cultural venues. Schiffbau is a giant hangar where the theater now plays. Nearby is the Freitag Tower, made up of cargo containers, and the market under the railway viaduct — jenseits IM VIADUKT, where locals buy cheese, wine and flowers. Here Kunsthalle is a space for contemporary art without a permanent collection, only live exhibitions.

Next, the route leads to Plazspitz, a park on the arrow of two rivers, and then up to ETH Zürich. The university terrace offers one of the best views of the city and the lake. The Natural History Museum nearby preserves one of the largest meteorites in Europe. The Central Library is a place where you can come across manuscripts of the 16th century just in the open.

Through the KWEER Queer Space, the route leads to Lindenhof, a hill from which the Romans once followed the Rhine. Urania Observatory stands directly above the city, and anyone can come look into the telescope on Friday night. The old botanical garden is small and almost invisible, but it is here that a banana was grown in a greenhouse for the first time in Switzerland.

Fraumünster is famous for its stained glass windows by Marc Chagall. Cafe Press Club is a place where journalists have been gathering for decades. Münsterbrücke leads to Helmhaus and on to Grossmünster, the cathedral from whose tower Zwingli proclaimed the Reformation.

From the Opera House, the route stretches along the lake to the China Garden, then to the Seebad Enge Lake Baths, where Zurichs swim even in October. It all ends in the Enge area — dinner at L'Altro and the silence of the Ritberg Museum among the trees.

This route is not about sightseeing. It's about what Zurich really is like.