Zurich

Of the two towers only Karl can be climbed, its spiral stair tight enough that people turn sideways to pass. Zwingli preached here and started the Reformation, so the inside is bare wall and no statues. Augusto Giacometti glazed the choir in the 1930s.

Chagall was past eighty when he made the five windows in the south transept, and the colour runs deepest in morning light. No photographs inside, so the glass leaves with the eye alone. The cloister frescoes next door are free to pass.

What sits on the rise now is a gravel court under lime trees, with the foundations of a Roman customs post and a medieval royal hall underneath. Old men gather at the fixed chessboards and shift pieces that come up to the knee.

Bank vaults are said to sit in layers under the paving; above ground only trams run and cars stay out. On Sundays almost every shop is shut and nothing is left but the windows. In December lights strung between the trees cover its whole length.

In summer the city gets into the Limmat upstream and lets the current carry it towards the centre. It runs fast and stopping halfway is hard, so pick your exit before you get in. Entry is free: a changing hut and a strip of lawn.

The 1898 building beside the station was made to look like a castle, and a concrete wing added in 2016 faces it across a courtyard. The permanent history run fills one floor, where timeline walls outlast the objects and two hours cover it.

The lookout on the ridge behind the city is fifteen minutes above the last train stop, on steel stairs that sing in wind. South along the crest the planets sit at scaled distances, Neptune two hours off. In winter fog fills the city while the ridge keeps sun.

Students at the technical university have ridden this red car to class for more than a century, and it lifts them from the riverbank to the campus on the hill in one pull. The ride is short, so most stay on their feet rather than sit.

Few places hold as many of Giacometti's thin, stretched figures in one room. The 2021 building across the road joins the old one underground. Argument over how its private collection was acquired has changed the labels more than once.

The room where Dada began in 1916 is still one room of this house, and a small exhibition space and a cafe hold it now. On performance nights chairs go out in that room, and there are few enough that more people stand than sit.

In 2003 the zoo on the hill east of town raised a greenhouse that feels like a slice of Madagascar forest. It stays hot and damp inside, so even in winter coats come off, and lemurs cross the branches overhead. Tram 6 runs to the terminus at the gate.

A football museum opened in 2016 in a former office block facing Enge station; the real World Cup trophy sits in a glass case at its heart. The first room hangs a shirt from every nation along one wall in rainbow order. Downstairs is a hands-on play zone.

Opened in 2020 beside the Lindt factory at Kilchberg, a short ride down the lakeshore. A 9 metre chocolate fountain fills the lobby, and the tour ends at a tasting bar where you help yourself to bars. Each ticket carries an entry time, so buy online first.

Less than an hour from Zurich by rail, at Neuhausen, the falls spread some 150 metres wide. Volume of water, not height, is what overwhelms, and a boat drops you on the mid-stream rock to climb its stairs. Balconies below Laufen castle take the spray head on.

A gift from the twin city of Kunming, opened in 1994 on the shore at Zurichhorn. Chinese craftsmen came to build the pavilions and bridges around the pond, planted with pine, bamboo and plum together. It closes for winter, so go between spring and autumn.

A pedestrian lane threading north to south through the old quarter across the Limmat from Bahnhofstrasse. By day it is souvenir shops and old bookshops; at night bar crowds spill into the street. Climb the stepped alleys off it and people thin out fast.

The clock face on its tower measures 8.7 metres across, the largest on any church in Europe. The tower belongs to the city rather than the parish, and fire watchmen long lived at the top. The small square one lane down from Lindenhof stays quiet.

Since 2010 the stone arches beneath a railway viaduct in District 5 have been a row of shops. Each arch holds one design shop or workshop, and a market hall at one end sells cheese and bread. When a train passes overhead, the arch hums.

A museum of Asian, African and American art in a villa inside a hillside park above the lake. Wagner stayed with the family who owned it, and a glass entrance now leads to galleries dug beneath the garden. Walking the park alone costs nothing.

A small castle town where Lake Zurich narrows at its far end, reached for the day by lake boat or train. Several rose gardens earn it the name town of roses, and the hilltop castle sees both arms of the lake. A wooden footbridge crosses to Hurden.

The last building Le Corbusier designed, completed in 1967 after his death. A steel roof hovers like an umbrella over walls of painted enamel panels. Set among lakeside lawns, it opens between spring and autumn only.

Each April, on its third Monday, the guilds parade and then the snowman effigy Boogg burns beside the opera house. How long its head takes to explode forecasts the summer. Other days the square is a broad gravel court on the lakeside walk.