Zurich Botanical Garden

Botanical Garden Zurich is one of the most popular tourist attractions. The lush green garden is a visual treat for all. This garden in Zurich is the most desired green spot amidst the quintessential urban civilization. Not only the tourists but the local people also visit the cool shadowy Botanical Garden in Zurich. It is a place worth visiting at any time of the year.

Botanical Garden Zurich is also known as Botanischer Garten. It is a part of the Zurich University. The gar-den preserves a large number of rare plants, as many as a variety of 15,000 species. Some uncommon sam-ples from other places like Southwest Africa and New Caledonia have also found their places in the Zurich Botanical Garden.

The Botanischer Garten der Universität displays greenhouses, which are open everyday from 9.30 to 11.30 in the morning and 1 to 4 in the afternoon. The Zurich botanical park is open for the visitors from 7 in the morning to 7 in the evening in the months of March to September. Only on the Saturdays and Sundays the timings are from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. During October to February, the park is open from 8am - 6pm on week-days and on weekends, the timings are from 8am -5pm.

Apart from being a leisure and recreational park, the botanical garden also plays the role of an educational institution for the botany students of the University of Zurich.

The address of the Zurich Botanicher Garten der Universität is as follows:

Zollikerstrasse 107,

CH-8008 Zurich,

Switzerland

Zurich Zoo

Zürich Zoo - with 320 species of animals from all over the word - is situated in a beautiful, natural parkland, where impressive encounters await the visitors.

In the children's paradise "Zoolino" visitors can come into direct contact with animals.

One section, housing particularly exotic creatures, is now home to birds from the tropical rain forests, apes and reptiles, often together with other species, in surroundings that perfectly replicate their natural habitat. A spacious new open-air compound for the spectacles bears and coatis is another of the Zoos's main attractions. It is one of the aims of Zoo Zürich to foster humankind's responsibility vis-a-vis animals and nature.

How to get there:

Tram 5, 6 or coach 751 to Zoo

Opening hours:

March - October from 9 am to 6 pm

November - February from 9 am to 5 pm

Masoala hall: March - October 10 am to 6 pm, November - February 10.00 am to 5 pm.

The Fraumünster

The Fraumünster abbey of Zürich was founded in 853 by Louis the German for his daughter Hildegard. He endowed the Benedictine convent with the lands of Zürich, Uri, and the Albis forest, and granted the convent immunity, placing it under his direct authority.

In 1045, King Henry III granted the convent the right to hold markets, collect tolls, and mint coins, and thus effectively made the abbess the ruler of the city.

Emperor Frederick II granted the abbey Reichsunmittelbarkeit in 1218, thus making it territorially independent of all authority save that of the Emperor himself, and increasing the political power of the abbess. The abbess assigned the mayor, and she frequently delegated the minting of coins to citizens of the city. However, the political power of the convent slowly waned in the fourteenth century, beginning with the establishment of the Zunftordnung (guild laws) in 1336 by Rudolf Brun, who also became the first independent mayor, i.e. not assigned by the abbess.

The abbey was dissolved on 30 November 1524 in the course of the reformation of Huldrych Zwingli. The monastery buildings were destroyed in 1898 to make room for the new Stadthaus. The church building today serves as the parish church for one of the city's 34 reformed parishes. Münsterhof, the town square in front of Fraumünster, is named after the former abbey.

 

The choir of the abbey includes 5 large stained glass windows designed by artist Marc Chagall and installed in 1970. Each of the 5 has a dominant color and depicts a Christian story. From left (northern wall) to right, the 5 works are:

 

• Prophets, depicting Elijah's ascent to heaven
• Jacob, displaying his combat, and dreams of heaven
• Christ, illustrating various scenes of Christ's life
• Zion, showing an angel trumpeting the end of the world
• Law, with Moses looking down upon the suffering of his people

 Equally impressive is the 9m tall stained glass of the North transept, created by Alberto Giacometti in 1940.

The Grossmünster

The Grossmünster ("great minster") is a Romanesque-style church that played an important role in the history of the Protestant Reformation. It is one of the three major churches of Zürich (the others being the Fraumünster and St. Peterskirche). The core of the present building near the banks of the Limmat River was constructed on the site of a Carolingian church, which was, according to legend, originally commissioned by Charlemagne. Construction of the present structure commenced around 1100 and it was inaugurated around 1220.

The Grossmünster was a monastery church, vying for precedence with the Fraumünster across the Limmat throughout the Middle Ages. According to legend, the Grossmünster was founded by Charlemagne, whose horse fell to its knees over the tombs of Felix and Regula, Zürich's patron saints. The legend helps support a claim of seniority over the Fraumünster, which was founded by Louis the German, Charlemagne's grandson. Recent archaeological evidence confirms the presence of a Roman burial ground at the site.

Zwingli on the bronze doors by Otto Münch (1935)Huldrych Zwingli initiated the Swiss-German Reformation in Switzerland from his pastoral office at the Grossmünster, starting in 1520. Zwingli won a series of debates presided over by the magistrate in 1523 which ultimately led local civil authorities to sanction the severance of the church from the papacy. The reforms initiated by Zwingli and continued by his successor, Heinrich Bullinger, account for the plain interior of the church. The iconoclastic reformers removed the organ and religious statuary in 1524. These changes, accompanied by abandonment of Lent, replacement of the Mass, disavowal of celibacy, eating meat on fast days, replacement of the lectionary with a seven-year New Testament cycle, a ban on church music, and other significant reforms make this church one of the most important sites in the history of the reformation and the birthplace of the Swiss-German reformation.

Capitals with grotesques in the grand south portalThe twin towers of the Grossmünster are regarded as perhaps the most recognized landmark in Zurich. Architecturally, the church is considered Romanesque in style and thus a part of the first pan-European architectural trend since Imperial Roman architecture. In keeping with the Romanesque architectural style, Grossmünster offers a great carved portal featuring medieval columns with grotesques adorning the capitals. A Romanesque crypt dates to the 11th and 13th centuries. The two towers were first erected between 1487 and 1492. Originally, they had high wooden steeples, which were destroyed by fire in 1781, following which the present neo-Gothic tops were added. Richard Wagner is known to have mocked the church's appearance as that of two pepper dispensers. The church now features modern stained-glass windows by Swiss artist Augusto Giacometti added in 1932. Ornate bronze doors in the north and south portals by Otto Münch were added in 1935 and 1950.

The church houses a reformation museum in the cloister. The annex to the cloister houses the theological school of the University of Zurich.

Felix and Regula

Legend has it that Felix and Regula, Roman Christians and the patron saints of Zürich, fled to the city from the massacre of their legion in Valais in the third century AD. They were martyred by decapitation on the site of today’s Wasserkirche for refusing to pray to Roman gods, whereupon they picked up their heads and carried them up the hill to the spot where they wished to be buried. Over the next centuries, pilgrims came from all over the region to pray at the graves of the saints, even though the legend of their martyrdom was probably one which survived by word of mouth only. By the eighth century the story had been written down, in conjunction with another tale in which Charlemagne arrived at the same spot having hunted a stag all the way from Aachen near Köln, when his horse suddenly went down on its knees in deference to the saints buried beneath. Charlemagne proceeded to found a church and adjacent chapterhouse in their honour, the forerunner of the Grossmünster. In the late ninth century, relics of the saints were transferred to the newly rebuilt Fraumünster, the women’s convent just across the Limmat, forming a pilgrimage trail through the city: the Grossmünster as the site of burial, the Wasserkirche as the site of execution, and the Fraumünster as the repository of the saints’ remains. A bridge – the Münsterbrücke – was built to link all three in about 1220.

History of Zurich

Zürich has been permanently settled for around 7,000 years. Its waterways were not just a lifeline; until the middle of the 19th century, the outflow of the lake also served as a transport route for heavy goods. Tip: You can find out more at the Swiss National Museum, which houses the most comprehensive collection of artifacts pertaining to Swiss cultural history.

In 15 BC, during a campaign over the Alps, the Romans arrived at the Lindenhof, where they set up a customs post known as Turicum. They were well acquainted with the secret of mortar and proceeded to construct Zürich’s first stone buildings. The Romans had a flair for detail as no other people before them. They also brought grapevines with them across the Alps, which added to the city’s attraction. Some 250 to 350 people lived in the Roman settlement of Turicum, which also had a toll bridge, a harbor and thermal baths.

The highly sophisticated system adopted by the Romans fell apart after their withdrawal in the year 401, for the Franks and the Alemans who followed were not town dwellers. They lacked the necessary expertise to repair and keep the infrastructure in good order. This led to the breakdown of the transportation system, with the result that trading was no longer possible and money became worthless. Various emperors and kings held their courts on the Lindenhof, and the Late Roman fortress was transformed into a castle. After the death of the last in the line of the Zähringer family, which had acted as a kind of city ruler, in 1218, Zürich was granted the right to be a free imperial city and was placed under the direct authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. Filled with a new sense of self-importance, the people of Zürich razed the castle on the Lindenhof to the ground, and in its place built the city’s first Town Hall next to the Limmat.

In 1336, with the help of the local craftsmen, the nobleman Rudolf Brun stormed and overthrew the City Council in the Town Hall and founded the Constitution of the Guilds. The guilds exerted considerable political influence from the end of the 14th century right up to the French Revolution. Under Rudolf Brun, Zürich joined the Swiss Confederation in 1351.

Around 1300, the first city walls were completed; monasteries and convents filled the empty spaces and did much towards maintaining the walls. According to legend, Charlemagne had the Grossmünster church built on the place where Zürich’s patron saints, the martyrs Felix und Regula, were buried. In addition, his grandson, Louis the German, erected the Fraumünster on the other bank of the Limmat as a convent for noblewomen. Particularly in this era when Zürich was a free imperial city, the abbess of the Fraumünster played a very important role; the convent was granted the right to hold markets, collect tolls and mint coins, thus effectively making her the ruler of the city.

Since time immemorial, the Grossmünster has been a powerful place, and particularly so at the time of Felix and Regula, as well as some centuries later, when, in 1519, Huldrych Zwingli was appointed the first priest of the Grossmünster church. Zwingli was against the mercenary army, against the selling of indulgences, and against everything that was not in the Bible. Thanks to his fighting spirit, he achieved that which the City Council had failed to do; he focused on the Word of God and banned from the Church everything that distracted people from following the teachings of the Bible. Zwingli filled people’s souls with new moral values. His reformation work was completed by his successor, Heinrich Bullinger, who, among other things, wrote the Helvetian Confession.

Religious refugees from the South settled in Zürich, bringing with them expertise and business connections, and the city gradually grew into a textile center. There followed the industrialization age, and with the construction of Zürich’s main train station, the railway opened up a gateway to the world. Thank to the structures mainly created by Alfred Escher, Zürich developed into Switzerland’s transportation, research and business center.

 

Nowadays, 75% of all those who work in Zürich are employed in the services sector. However, former factory halls have not been left standing empty; new life has taken root behind ancient walls. For example, in the Zürich West quarter, which is now home to trend gastronomy and a wide variety of nightclubs and bars, as well as numerous galleries. Zürich has transformed itself into a destination abounding in experiences; conveniently located in the very heart of Europe, it offers a wealth of possibilities to enjoy gastronomy, culture, shopping, events, nightlife and nature. And all this seasoned with the best quality of life in the world !