Zurich: Old Town, Lindt and churches

We only spent one full day in Zurich but we walked a lot, ate a lot and saw many amazing sights.  So this is a long post to try and share most of the Swiss photos before I move onto London where we are staying for about a week.  Zurich is well known for its chocolate, financial institutions and watchmakers.  There were beautiful signage on the buildings but the streets were far quieter than Rome and the churches had the Reformation austerity compared to the Catholic extravagances of the Roman churches and buildings.

We stayed in an AirBnB studio apartment a short walk from the Old Town.  It was nice though fairly basic.  Enough for our needs for a couple of nights and I am sure it was well enough equipped to last longer.  The bathroom had lovely green tiles and I was amazed to see that the hotplates actually folded back against the wall.  I didn't know such things existed!

 

 We arrived in the dark so it was quite a sight to step outside our apartment building the morning and see this beautiful building opposite.  It had beautiful leadlighting on the windows, owl motifs under the eaves and cute dormer windows on the roof.

A favourite place was the medieval street the Augustinergasse.  (As an aside, I loved that the main language of Zurich was German.  I don't speak it but I have learnt some in classes years ago and feel more comfortable speaking it than most other foreign languages.)  The Augustinergasse (top photo) is a fine sight with its colourful buildings, carved wooden window boxes, paintings and interesting signs.

This is my best photo of Peterskirche on St Peterhofstatt.  It is Zurich's oldest parish church and has the largest clock face in Europe.  It shows how the churches are built around so that it can be hard to work out where the entrance is.

Inside St Peter is elegant but bare of pictures and statues, as befits a church that went through the Reformation in Zurich. 

In Münsterhof (the square where the Fraumünster church stands), I was lured into the homewares store Sibler by the sale display in the window.  It has such good basic kitchenware with a bit of fun thrown in.  The pasta parpadelle rolling pins and ravioli stamps were very tempting.  Then I almost bought some of the above patterned shoelaces for gifts.  But at 40 Swiss francs each, they seemed a bit pricey.

 Zurich has wonderful creative signs outside lots of shops.  I liked this one with the cats.

 And there are faces on building too.  The mustachioed and helmeted soldier seemed a typical Swiss face.

The churches have doors.  Many doors.  Finding the right entrance can be a challenge.  This wooden door was not the entrance to the Fraumünster church.  I admired its arched shape and carved patterns.  Next to it is a picture that looks medieval (and has two headless people holding their heads in their hands!)

This is the entrance to the Fraumünster.  I had a nice chat about Melbourne and visas with the friendly woman at the ticket office when I paid the entrance fee.  The brochure that came with the fee was really informative about the various points of interest.

The Fraumünster was built upon the site of a former abbey for aristocratic women that was founded by King Louis the German for his daughter Hildegard in 853.  Hildegard was the first abbess.  Legend has it that she and her sister, Bertha, who were already living a cloistered life, were visiting Zurich to pray when they found a deer with lighted antlers who led them to a spot by the River Limmat.  They took this as a sign from God that they should build a church here.  This is depicted in the above artwork from the church.  Louis refused to believe them but saw a rope fall from the sky on the location which made him believe.  It seems he was more convinced by signs from God than his daughter! 

The abbey was dissolved in 1524, following the arrival of Ulrich Zwingli in town who led the Reformation in Zurich.  Following this, it became a Protestant Church with altars, organ and statues removed and the walls whitewashed.  Hence the way it looked before 1524 would have been very different.

The stained glass windows were also removed.  Would Zwingli be horrified to see the brightly coloured stained glass windows that were designed by Marc Chagall and installed in the 1970s?  My camera cannot do them justice but it is amazing to behold.

Next was the crypt with some old remains and a short history of the Reformation. It had some interesting information but I was even more impressed by the Room of Silence.  It had a simple elegance that made it seem a lovely place to sit in silence.  Unfortunately although I was alone silent in the room I didn't have time to dwell in silence.

I then crossed the bridge over the River Limmat.  From the middle I could look back at the Fraumünster with its towering steeple ...

... and when I looked forward I could see the twin towers of the Grossmünster on the other side of the river.  According to legend it was commissioned by Charlemagne when his horse fell to its knees over the graves of Zurich's patron saints: Felix, Regula and Exuperantius.

The construction of the current church began in 1100.  Ulrich Zwingli came to Zurich to be pastor at the Grossmünster, from where he initiated the Reformation in Sweden.  As with the other churches I had seen, it was stripped of all religious idols (ie decorations) at this time. 

Further down the River Limmat, I could see the Rathaus (town hall) which was built in 1694-8 over the water.

The River Limmat begins at the mouth of Lake Zurich.  We took a train along the edge of the lake to the Lindt Home of Chocolate.  We got on the wrong train, saw the large Lindt sign pass us by and had to take a train a couple of stops back.  Thanks to the helpful guy who directed us to the right platform.

The first sight that greeted us was the giant chocolate fountain.  We went to the cafe and once we had eaten, we signed up for a self guided tour of the Lindt Museum.  Then we stuffed around with ticket not working and had to return to the information desk.  I said it was too late for us to do the tour because we'd miss our next booking.  It took a while for me to understand that the ticket we had been sold was for 1-3pm that day and for me to get the information officer to understand that we had been sold an invalid ticket at 3.36pm (thank goodness for digital banking).  Finally we were refunded the 25 Swiss Francs we had paid for an invalid ticket because it was their error.

We hadn't had lunch so we ordered hot chocolates and a brownie and a croissant.  Sylvia loved the cream and mini marshmallows on hers but I removed most of my cream.  They looked pretty cute when served with a mound of cream, a drizzle of chocolate and a square of Lindt chocolate.  I found them more milky that I prefer and not a patch on the amazing hot chocolates in Rome.  (No, I did not expect hot chocolate to be better in Rome than Zurich.)  Sylvia enjoyed dipping her croissant in her drink and I loved my brownie but it was so rich I was glad I had bought a bottle of Orangina to follow it.

As we had a refund from the museum, we spent generously in the Lindt gift shop.   The above photo is of Lindt balls of many flavours.  So much chocolate to choose from!

Then we raced to catch our bus back into the centre of town.  Our bus dropped us at the Quaibrücke (quay bridge) where the River Limmat meets Lake Zurich.  I love this photo I took with the snow topped Swiss Alps in the background.

We had been in a hurry because we had a booking for a fondue dinner at the Swiss Chuchi to use a voucher I had received as a Christmas present.  I will write more about this another time but I can tell you it was lovely to have a bit of time to walk through the old town again and across the River Limmat on the way there.