5 fascinating tours to show you a new side of Zurich

See Zurich through the eyes of designers and makers on this fascinating tour, which leads participants around some of the city’s most important creative hubs. You’ll learn the history of famous local design innovations (such as Zuriga espresso machines) as you journey between different buzzing districts, including Zollstrasse and Europaallee. In these artfully minded urban pockets spread around Zurich Main Station, you’ll get to test – and even taste – some of the products being produced just metres away from you, and perhaps even meet some of the local artisans.

Discover some of the many women that have shaped Zurich’s history and identity over the years on this tour, which leads visitors around locations connected to influential and important female figures associated with the city. See the location of Zurich’s first shoe shop, opened in 1880 by Franziska Dosenbach, now heralded as one of Zurich’s most successful businesswomen and entrepreneurs. You’ll also learn about Switzerland’s first female doctor, Marie Heim-Vögtlin, who graduated from the University of Zurich in 1872, as well as visiting Zurich Main Station to view ‘L’ange Protecteur’, one of the many bold and brilliant ‘Nana’ sculptures by French artist Niki de Saint Phalle. This one weighs over one ton and watches over the crowds who pass through the station.

Zurich is positively packed with incredible architecture and innovative structures. Get a close-up look at some of the most interesting and boundary-breaking buildings in the city from across the centuries in this tour. Stops include the mighty Swiss National Museum (Landesmuseum), designed by renowned architect Gustav Gull and opened in 1898, the bustling and cavernous Zurich Hauptbahnhof rail station and the eye-catching, retro-futurist Globus department store. You’ll also get a glimpse of the high life in contemporary Zurich at the luxurious-yet-historic Widder Hotel, whose modern rework was undertaken by acclaimed architect Tilla Theus.

Where better to delve into the roots of the experimental Dada art scene than in the city where it all began? Back in 1916, German writer Hugo Ball laid the foundations for Dadaism through his satirical work and by opening a short-lived and eclectic nightclub, Cabaret Voltaire. The club’s original site is one of the stops on this tour, which also navigates to other important venues used by Dadaists, as well as explaining more about the movement and its influence on present-day art. Other places visited on the tour include the still-thriving Café Odeon (a favourite meeting place for Dada artists) and the site of the first Laban dance school, which attracted Dadaists looking to try out new performance techniques.

With its enchanting architecture, colourful buildings and waterside settings, it’s not hard to fall in love whilst in Zurich, as this heartfelt tour demonstrates. Learn about incredible love stories (and a few of the heartbreaks) that have been played out in the city, including Albert Einstein’s first marriage and Richard Wagner’s dilemma. Along the way, you’ll visit sites that have played a part in these great romances. These include a hotel where none other than Casanova stayed during his time in the city and the former site of the Aktientheater (which burned down in 1890), where a married Richard Wagner first met Mathilde Wesendonck, who was attending one of Wagner’s concerts with her husband – Wagner and Wesendonck would later embark on an illicit affair. Love isn’t always simple, but when it happens in Zurich, at least it’s scenic.

For more information on other tours and to book your place, visit zuerich.com.