Switzerland
Zurich
A banking capital that swims: Zwingli's Reformation town on one bank, luxury windows on the other, and a lake clean enough to jump into.
Switzerland's largest city sits at the foot of a long lake with the Alps on the horizon, and runs on money, art and water in roughly equal measure. Bahnhofstrasse carries the banks and the luxury windows from the main station down to the lakeshore, while the twin towers of the Grossmünster, where Zwingli launched the Swiss Reformation, face the guild houses across the Limmat. It is expensive and very well run, and in summer the whole city decamps to the river and lake baths.
Suggested stay
2–3 days
Language
German, French, Italian
Currency
CHF
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Zurich
The water Wooden bathing houses along the Limmat and the lakeshore let you swim in the middle of a financial capital, and every street fountain runs drinkable.
Art above its weight The Kunsthaus holds the largest Munch collection outside Norway, Chagall's windows light the Fraumünster choir, and Dada was invented in a bar in the old town.
Everything works Trams every few minutes, trains into the Alps inside the hour, and a centre small enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes.
Two cities in one Guild houses and private banks on one side of the tracks, and an old industrial west of viaduct arches and container towers on the other.
Best time to visit
Apr, Sep-Oct
14-20° days
47.374° N, 8.541° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Zurich
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Weather & when to go to Zurich
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr, Sep-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Zurich
December through February is cold and grey on the plateau, often shut under low fog for days at a stretch, and a lake city loses much of its point. December is still busy, between the Christmas markets and the ski trains running south, so it is neither quiet nor cheap. Spring and early autumn are the reliable windows.
Top things to do in Zurich
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Grossmünster - climb the Karlsturm
history culture arts scenic 👍 PopularThe blunt twin towers on the east bank are the city's emblem and the pulpit from which Zwingli argued Zurich into the Reformation, which is why the interior is so bare. Sigmar Polke's stone windows glow in the nave, and a tight stair up one tower ends above the old roofs, the lake and the Alps.
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Fraumünster - Chagall's windows in the choir
culture arts history ⭐ Highly recommendedOnce the abbey whose abbess ruled the town, now a plain green-spired church holding five stained-glass windows Marc Chagall made in his eighties, plus an earlier Giacometti window in the transept. Late morning light is the moment. The cloister frescoes next door tell the city's founding legend.
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Bahnhofstrasse - walk the banking mile
shopping culture arts 👍 PopularA straight lime-shaded run from the main station to the lake, laid over the filled-in moat, with the watch and fashion houses at the top, the private banks around Paradeplatz in the middle, and gold in vaults beneath. Window shopping is the honest activity here, and it ends at the water.
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Kunsthaus Zurich - Switzerland's biggest art collection
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedMunch outside Norway in real depth, a great room of Giacometti figures, Swiss painting from Fuseli to Hodler, and modern work in David Chipperfield's stone extension across the square. Half a day if you are the sort of person who reads the labels.
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Lake Zurich - swim at the badis or take a boat
nature wildlife scenic 👍 PopularFrom June the city moves to the water: wooden bathing houses on both shores, the free-flowing river baths at Letten where people drift down the Limmat, and lawns at Mythenquai and Tiefenbrunnen. Scheduled boats run the length of the lake to Rapperswil, and the mountains sit at the far end.
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Uetliberg - ride the S10 up the city's mountain
scenic nature wildlife adventureA suburban train climbs to just under 900 m in about twenty-five minutes, and a lookout tower puts the whole lake, the city and the Alpine wall in one frame. The Planetenweg ridge walk to Felsenegg takes about two hours on an easy path, with a cable car down at the end.
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Swiss National Museum - the country in one castle
history culture artsThe turreted pile behind the main station is the national history museum, running from prehistoric finds and Reformation altarpieces to how Switzerland assembled itself into a federal state. A good, unsentimental first stop, and the modern wing wrapped round the courtyard is worth seeing on its own.
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Niederdorf - the old town lanes east of the river
history nightlife music foodThe Dörfli is a knot of stepped alleys, fountains and shuttered houses behind the Grossmünster, quiet by day and loud after dark, with the university and the Polytechnic terrace climbing the hill above it. Cross to the Lindenhof on the west bank for the view back over the rooftops.
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Cabaret Voltaire - where Dada started
culture arts historyA narrow house on Spiegelgasse where a group of wartime exiles began shouting nonsense poetry in 1916 and named it Dada. Lenin was living a few doors up the same lane at the time. It is a small bar and exhibition space now, and takes half an hour.
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Zurich West - viaduct arches and the Prime Tower
food nightlife music shoppingThe old machine works and shipbuilding halls north-west of the centre, reworked into a district of railway-arch shops, a theatre in a shipyard, a shop stacked from freight containers, and rooftop bars in the tallest tower. Frau Gerolds Garten is where the city drinks in summer.
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Lindt Home of Chocolate - Kilchberg
food culture artsOut along the lake's west shore, a museum-and-factory visit built round a tall chocolate fountain, with the history of the Swiss industry, a tasting run and a large shop. Frankly aimed at families and gift buyers, and honest about being so. Reachable by bus, train or lake boat.
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Zurich Zoo - the Masoala rainforest hall
nature wildlifeOn the hillside above the city, best known for a vast glasshouse recreating a slice of Madagascan rainforest that you walk through at ground level, plus an elephant park and a Mongolian steppe enclosure. A tram and a short funicular get you there.
Best areas to stay in Zurich
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Altstadt and Niederdorf (Kreis 1)
First-time visitors $$$Medieval lanes either side of the Limmat
Explore hotels in Altstadt and Niederdorf (Kreis 1) →
Seefeld (Kreis 8)
Lakeside calm $$$Calm lakeside streets, cafes, opera end
Explore hotels in Seefeld (Kreis 8) →
Zurich West (Kreis 5)
Nightlife and design $$Post-industrial, design hotels, late bars
Explore hotels in Zurich West (Kreis 5) →
Langstrasse (Kreis 4)
Budget and night owls $Loud, mixed, the city's nightlife spine
Explore hotels in Langstrasse (Kreis 4) →
Enge (Kreis 2)
Families and parks $$Leafy west shore, villas and bathing houses
Explore hotels in Enge (Kreis 2) →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Zurich
Getting to & around Zurich
Getting there
Fly into Zurich Airport, then about ten minutes by train to the Hauptbahnhof in the middle of town.
Flight
Zurich Airport (ZRH)
The railway station sits directly under the terminal, and trains run to Zurich Hauptbahnhof in ten to fifteen minutes, several times an hour from early morning until after midnight. Many of them carry straight on to Lucerne, Bern or Basel, so you can skip the city entirely if you are only passing through.
Train
Zurich Hauptbahnhof
The busiest station in the country, at the top of Bahnhofstrasse: fast direct trains from Bern, Basel, Lucerne, Geneva, St Gallen and Lugano, at least twice an hour on the main lines.
Train
Zurich Hauptbahnhof
International services arrive from Munich, Stuttgart, Vienna and Milan, and from Paris by high-speed train via Basel.
Drive
Motorways converge from Basel, Bern and the Gotthard route, but central parking is scarce and costly; most visitors are better off leaving the car outside.
Getting around
Tram
The default way to move: dense blue-and-white lines radiating from the Hauptbahnhof, Bellevue and Paradeplatz, every few minutes.
TBC
On foot
The old town, Bahnhofstrasse and the lakefront form one walkable block; almost nothing central is more than twenty minutes away.
Free
S-Bahn
Suburban trains handle the longer hops, including Uetliberg, the airport and the lake shores, all on the same ticket as the trams.
TBC
Lake boat
Scheduled boats leave Bürkliplatz for the lake villages; the short round trips count as normal transport rather than a cruise.
TBC
Bike
Flat along both shores and steep away from them, with marked lanes, a city bike-share and free loan bikes in summer.
TBC
Day trips from Zurich
Rhine Falls
Half dayEurope's biggest waterfall
Not tall, but enormously wide and loud, with the whole Rhine forcing through a broken limestone ledge. Walkways drop to a platform in the spray and small boats run out to the rock in midstream, which you can climb. Best in early summer when the snowmelt is still coming through.
Getting there
train
About 1 hr by train to Schloss Laufen am Rheinfall
Lucerne
Full dayLakeside old town
The covered Chapel Bridge with its painted gables, a wall of watchtowers above the roofs, and a lake of steep arms with paddle steamers crossing it. Cogwheel railways and cable cars climb Pilatus and Rigi from the shore, which is what turns it from a stroll into a full day.
Getting there
train
About 45 min by train
Stein am Rhein
Full dayPainted Rhine village
A small walled town where the Rhine leaves Lake Constance, its main square lined with houses frescoed top to bottom and named after what they show. A monastery museum sits by the bridge and a castle looks down from the vineyard slope. Riverboats link it to Schaffhausen in summer.
Getting there
train | ferry
About 1 hr 20 min by train via Schaffhausen
Winterthur
Half dayMuseum town
An old industrial town that spent its machine money on art: the Oskar Reinhart collections hold French Impressionists in numbers a city this size has no business owning. The Technorama science centre on the edge of town is the best rainy-day option near Zurich for children.
Getting there
train
About 25 min by train
Appenzell and the Säntis
Full dayAlpine farm country
Painted village houses, cowbells and the most conservative corner of the country, under a sudden limestone range. A cable car from Schwägalp lifts you to the Säntis summit and its wide view over six countries on a clear day, with the cliff-clinging Äscher inn nearby.
Getting there
train | bus | car
About 2 hr by train via St Gallen
Bern
Full dayUNESCO capital
The federal capital, a sandstone medieval town of covered arcades and painted fountains wrapped in a loop of the green Aare, with the parliament on the ridge and bears in a riverside park. Quieter and older-feeling than Zurich, and easy as a there-and-back day.
Getting there
train
About 1 hr by train
A little history of Zurich
Zurich began as Turicum, a Roman customs post on the Lindenhof hill where the Limmat leaves the lake, taxing goods moving between Italy and the Rhine. A convent founded in 853 by Louis the German for his daughter gave the abbess of the Fraumünster the right to rule the town, and Zurich became a free imperial city in 1218. In 1336 the knight Rudolf Brun overthrew the patricians and handed power to the craft guilds, whose houses still line the river; the city joined the Swiss Confederacy fifteen years later.
Huldrych Zwingli began preaching from the Grossmünster in 1519 and made Zurich the engine of the Swiss Reformation, stripping the churches and leaving a plain, disciplined town that later turned its severity into industry and banking. The Polytechnic, now ETH, opened in 1855 and made the city a scientific capital. During the First World War the neutral city filled with exiles: Lenin lived on Spiegelgasse, Joyce was writing Ulysses, and a few doors along a cabaret invented Dada. Banking made the twentieth century, and when the machine works and shipbuilding halls of the western districts emptied out, they were rebuilt as the bars and studios of Zurich West.
The Romans set up Turicum, a customs post on the Lindenhof hill.
Louis the German founds the Fraumünster abbey; its abbess rules the town.
Zurich becomes a free imperial city.
Rudolf Brun's revolution hands the city to the craft guilds.
Zurich joins the Swiss Confederacy.
Zwingli preaches at the Grossmünster and begins the Swiss Reformation.
The Polytechnic, later ETH, opens and makes Zurich a scientific centre.
Exiles found Dada at the Cabaret Voltaire on Spiegelgasse.
The emptied industrial west is rebuilt as Zurich West.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / J
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+41
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
Mobile network & SIM card
Get an eSIM before you fly
A Switzerland eSIM installs in minutes and works the moment you switch off flight mode. No SIM swap, no roaming bill.
FAQs about Zurich
▸ When is the best time to visit Zurich?
April, September and October are the pick: clear light, mild days and no crowding. High summer is the only time the lake and river swimming works, which is a real part of the city. January and February are cold, grey and often fogged in for days.
▸ How many days do you need in Zurich?
Two covers the old town, one big museum and an afternoon on the lake. Add a third if you want a trip out, and the choice is easy: Rhine Falls for half a day, Lucerne or Bern for a full one.
▸ Is Zurich expensive?
Yes, reliably near the top of any list of costly cities, and eating out is where it bites hardest. The best things are cheap or free, though: the lake walk, the river bathing spots along the Limmat, drinking from the street fountains and the ridge walk down from Uetliberg.
▸ Is Zurich a good base for the Alps?
A very good one. Trains reach Lucerne in about three quarters of an hour and the nearer ski areas inside two, so you can ski or hike for the day and sleep in the city. Winter is grey and cold down on the plateau, and it is exactly when the mountains are worth the trip.
▸ Can you really swim in the lake and the river?
In summer, yes, and the city does it constantly. The lake has lawns and wooden bathing houses on both shores, and the Limmat has river baths where people float down with the current. The water is properly cold, and it is checked and clean.
▸ Is Zurich dull in the evening?
It has a reputation for it and the reputation is out of date. Zurich West and the Langstrasse run one of the busiest club scenes in the German-speaking world, and the city hosts an enormous techno street parade each August. Sundays are the genuinely quiet part, with most shops shut.
More in Switzerland
Bern
A UNESCO-listed medieval capital you can walk across in twenty minutes, with bears at one end and a swimmable river all the way round.
✓ best Apr, Sep-OctGeneva
A small, expensive lakeside city that runs half the world's diplomacy from behind a medieval Old Town, with the Alps an hour from the door.
✓ best Apr-OctInterlaken
The gateway to the Jungfrau region: two lakes, one huge meadow, and trains that climb from the valley floor to the highest railway station in Europe.
✓ best Apr, Sep-Oct