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Everything about Zurich Switzerland totally explained

City Districts

The previous boundaries of the city of Zürich (before 1893) were more or less synonymous with the location of the old town. Two large expansions of the city limits occurred in 1893 and in 1934 when the city of Zürich merged with many surrounding municipalities, that had been growing increasingly together since the 19th century. Today, the city is divided into twelve districts (known as Kreis in German), numbered 1 to 12, each one of which may contain anywhere between 1 and 4 neighborhoods:
Most of the district boundaries are fairly similar to the original boundaries of the previously existing municipalities before they were incorporated into the city of Zürich.

Transport

Zürich is a hub for rail, road, and air traffic. It has several railway stations, including Zürich Main Station, Oerlikon, Stadelhofen, Hardbrücke, Tiefenbrunnen, Enge, Wiedikon and Altstetten. The Cisalpino, InterCityExpress, and even the French TGV high-speed trains stop in Zürich.
   The A1, A3 and A4 motorways pass close to Zürich. The A1 heads west towards Bern and Geneva and eastwards towards St. Gallen; the A4 leads northwards to Schaffhausen; and the A3 heads northwest towards Basel and southeast along Lake Zurich and Lake Walen towards Sargans. Zürich International Airport in Kloten is located less than 10 kilometres northeast of the city. There is also an airfield in Dübendorf, although it only used for military aviation.
   Within Zürich and throughout the canton of Zürich, the ZVV network of public transport has traffic density ratings among the highest worldwide. If you add frequency, which in Zürich can be as often as 7 minutes, it does become the densest across all dimensions. Three means of mass-transit exist: the S-Bahn (local trains), trams, and buses (both diesel and electric, also called trolley buses).
   In addition the public transport network includes boats on the lake and river, funicular railways and even a cable car between Adliswil and Felsenegg. Tickets purchased for a trip are valid on all means of public transportation (train, tram, bus, boat).

Demographics

There are officially 376,815 people (since Dec. 31st 2007) living in Switzerland's largest city. 30.6% of the registered inhabitants of Zürich don't hold Swiss citizenship, which is 115,379 people . German citizens make up the largest group of foreigners in the city with 22.0%, followed by immigrants from Kosovo, Albania, Italy. The population of the city proper including suburbs 1.08 million people. However, the entire metropolitan area (including the cities of Winterthur, Baden, Brugg, Schaffhausen, Frauenfeld, Uster/Wetzikon, Rapperswil-Jona and Zug) has a population of around 1.68 million people.

Languages

The official language used by the government and in most publications is German, while the most commonly spoken dialect in Zürich is Zürichdeutsch (Zürich German), which is a local dialect of Swiss German. As of 2000, German is the mother-tongue of 77.7% of the population. Albanian (5.8%) follows behind, and Italian is the third-most common native language at 4.7% of the population. Other native languages spoken by more than 1% of the population include South Slavic languages (2.2%) — this includes Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovenian), Spanish (2.2%), French (2.1%), English (1.8%), Portuguese (1.6%).

Religion

Since the reformation led by Huldrych Zwingli, Zürich has remained the center and stronghold of Protestantism in Switzerland. In the course of the 20th century, this has changed slightly as Catholics now make up the largest religious group in the city, with 33.3%. More and more inhabitants of the city declare themselves as being without religion (this was 16.8% of the population in 2000).

Social

The level of unemployment in Zürich is 2.6% (August 2007). About 4% of the city population (15,500 people) live either directly or indirectly on welfare from the state (April 2005).

Sights

  • Grossmünster (great minster) (near Lake Zürich, in the old city), where Zwingli was pastor; first building around 820; declared by Charlemagne imperial church
  • Fraumünster (our lady's minster) first church built before 874; the Romanesque choir dates from 1250-70; Marc Chagall stained glass choir windows; (on the opposite side of the Limmat). During 2004 the Fraumünster was fully renovated. During this period the installed scaffolding went above the tip of the tower allowing a unique and exceptional 360° panoramic view of Zürich.

    Churches

  • St. Peter (downstream from the Fraumünster, in the old city); with the largest clock face in Europe

    Museums

  • Museum Bärengasse, history of the city in the 17th century
  • Kunsthaus Zürich, one of the largest collections in Classic Modern Art in the world (Munch, Picasso, Braque, Giacometti, etc.) (External Link)
  • Museum Rietberg, Arts of Asia, Africa, America and Oceania (External Link)
  • Museum Bellerive, Museum for fashion, architecture and design (External Link), located in a villa on the beach of the lake
  • Kunsthalle Zürich (External Link)
  • Migros Museum, modern and avantgarde international Art. (External Link)
  • Museum of Design Zürich (External Link)
  • Swiss National Museum (Landesmuseum) (External Link), located in the Platzspitz park opposite to the main station
  • Johann Jacobs Museum, history of colonial Fine Food and coffee (External Link)
  • Johanna Spyri Museum (External Link)
  • Haus Konstruktiv (External Link), constructive, concrete and conceptual art and design
  • NONAM North American Native Museum (External Link)
  • Museum of the History of Medicine

    Other sights

  • Lindenhof near St. Peter; site of the Roman and medieval castle.
  • Guild houses along the river (downstream from the Grossmünster)
  • Old town (Altstadt), District 1, on both sides of the river
  • Bahnhofstrasse, Zürich (shopping avenue) starting at main train station
  • Parade-Platz, Plaza in the middle of Bahnhofstrasse, Zürich, a center of financial activity, with the world-headquarters of several Swiss banks including UBS and Credit Suisse.
  • Zoological garden (External Link)
  • Masoala Rainforest Ecosystem Great Glass Hall in the Zoological garden with trees, flowers and animals in liberty from the rainforest of Masoala National Park in Madagascar (External Link)
  • Botanical Garden of the University of Zürich (External Link)
  • Chinese Garden, Zürich (External Link)
  • Neu Oerlikon, part of City District Oerlikon: northern quarter of the city - Oerliker Park, MFO Park, Center-11 Building, Price Waterhouse Building, ABB Building, UBS Building, and other modern public spaces. (External Link)
  • Lake Zürich, running from Zürich to Rapperswil and linking with the Obersee
  • Uetliberg, a hill to the west of the city at an altitude of 813 meters above sea level, with Uetlibergturm TV-tower
  • Fluntern Cemetery
  • Cabaret Voltaire, birthplace of Dada

    Business, industry and commerce

    UBS, Credit Suisse, Swiss Re, and many other financial institutions have their headquarters in Zürich, the commercial center of Switzerland. Zürich is one of the world biggest centre for offshore banking. The financial sector accounts for about one quarter of the city's economic activities. The Swiss Stock Exchange is located in Zürich (see also Swiss banking).
       Zürich is a leading financial centre and has repeatedly been proclaimed the global city with the best quality of life anywhere in the world. The Greater Zurich Area is Switzerland’s economic center and home to a vast number of international companies. The GDP of the Zürich Area is CHF 210 billion (USD 160 billion) or CHF 58'000 (USD 45'000) per capita (2005).

    Contributory factors to economic strength

    The success of the Greater Zürich Economic Area as one of the most important in the world is due to many factors: The very low tax rate and the possibility for foreign companies and private persons to optimize their tax burden by personalized tax agreement with the Tax Authorities is surely one of the key points. This practice often causes conflicts with Switzerland's neighbours in Europe, who don't like this type of successful and aggressive strategy for attracting large corporations and service/research centers, such as IBM, General Motors Europe, Toyota Europe, UBS, Credit Suisse, Google, Microsoft,ABB Ltd., and Degussa. The fact that Switzerland doesn't have an inheritance tax is also an important attraction for wealthy private persons.
       Another reason for the economic success of Zürich is the extensive research and educational (R&D) field of the city. The ETH Zurich is ranked alongside the University of Zurich: there are more than 58,000 students. The reservoir for qualified employees is therefore impressive.
       A new multi-purpose area in southern Zürich (Sihlcity) ((External Link)) has opened its doors on March 22,2007, spread over 100,000 square metres in the center of Zürich. Among other things it includes a shopping center and a movie theater. Sihlcity was built on the foundations of the former Sihl Paper Factory.
       Other data: Switzerland scored in the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2005 within the Top 10 in the following categories:
  • Nobel Prizes per resident (No.2)
  • Active patents per resident (No.2)
  • Private research expenditure (No.6)
  • R&D expenditure per resident (No.6)
  • R&D employees per resident (No.8)
  • R&D expenditure as % of the GNP (No.10) Most of the Swiss R&D institutions are concentrated in the Zürich area.
       The high quality of life has been cited as a likely reason for the presence of international economic growth in Zürich. Mercer has ranked Zürich as the city with the highest quality of life anywhere in the world for the fourth consecutive time. Berne and Geneva were also ranked among the Top 10. Statistics show that in the productive sector of the city 60% speak German, 43% English, 30% French and 13% Italian. As such, the city is home to a considerable number of people speaking at least two or three languages.

    The Swiss stock exchange

    The Swiss stock exchange is called SWX Swiss Exchange. The SWX is the head group of several different worldwide operative financial systems: virt-x, Eurex, Eurex US, EXFEED and STOXX. The exchange turnover generated at the SWX was in 2007 of 1,780,499.5 million CHF; the number of transactions arrived in the same period at 35,339,296 and the Swiss Performance Index (SPI) arrived at a total market capitalization of 1,359,976.2 million CHF.
       The SWX Swiss Exchange goes back more than 150 years. In 1996, fully electronic trading replaced the traditional floor trading system at the stock exchanges of Geneva (founded in 1850), Zürich (1873) and Basel (1876).

    Government

    The legislative power is in hands of the city parliament that's called "Gemeinderat". It consist of 125 members elected by the people of Zurich.
       The executive power is being executed by the city council named "Stadtrat". Similar to the city parliament the councillors are also elected by the people of Zurich. Each councillor is responsible for a specific department. One member of the council is also acting as city president which best could be described as the mayor. Current city president is Elmar Ledergerber.

    Education and research

    Zürich is home to many universities, colleges and gymnasiums. Two of Switzerland most distinguished universities are located in the city. The technical university ETH Zürich which is controlled by the state and the University of Zürich that's under direction of the canton of Zurich. Both universities are well-known and have an international reputation. They were listed in the top 200 world universities rated in 2007.

    Media

    Many large Swiss media conglomerates are headquartered in Zürich, such as tamedia, Ringier and the NZZ-Verlag. Because of this, Zürich is one of the most important media locations in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. This status has been recently reinforced by the increase in availability of online publications published in Zürich.

    Television

    The headquarters of Switzerland's national German-language television network (SF) are located in the Leutschenbach neighborhood, to the north of the Oerlikon train station. Regional television network TeleZüri (Zürich Television) has its headquarters near Escher-Wyss Platz. The production facilities for private networks Star TV, u1 TV and 3+ are located in Schlieren.

    Radio

    One section of the Swiss German-language public radio station DRS is located in Zürich. There are other local radio stations broadcasting from Zürich, such as Radio 24 on the Limmatstrasse, Energy Zürich in Seefeld, Radio LoRa and Radio 1 (on the frequency of former Radio Tropic). There are other radio stations that operate only during certain parts of the year, such as CSD Radio (May/June), Radio Streetparade (July/August) and rundfunk.fm (August/September).

    Daily newspapers

    There are three large daily newspapers published in Zürich that are known across Switzerland. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), the Tages-Anzeiger and the Blick, the largest Swiss tabloid. All three of those newspapers publish Sunday editions. These are the "NZZ am Sonntag", "SonntagsZeitung" and "SonntagsBlick". Besides the three main daily newspapers, there are free daily commuter newspapers which are widely distributed: 20 Minuten (20 minutes), published weekdays in the mornings, .ch (weekday morning), News (weekday morning) and heute, weekdays but in the late afternoon, and Cashdaily(External Link), a finance-related weekday free newspaper published in the mornings, but only available at certain branded(External Link) newspaper sales kiosks.

    Magazines

    There are a number of magazines from major publishers that are based in Zürich. Some examples are: Bilanz, Die Weltwoche, and Annabelle.

    Culture

    Events

  • Street Parade
  • Sechseläuten, spring festival of the guilds and burning of the Böögg
  • Zürcher Theater Spektakel, international theater festival, ranking among the most important European festivals for contemporary performing arts.
  • Kunst Zürich, international contemporary art fair with an annual guest city (New York in 2005); combines most recent and youngest art with the works of well-established artists.
  • Annual public city campaign, sponsored by the City Vereinigung (the local equivalent of a chamber of commerce) with the cooperation of the city government. Past themes have included lions (1986), cows (1998), benches (2003), and teddy bears (2005).
  • Weltklasse Zürich, annual track and field athletics meeting held every August
  • freestyle.ch, one of the biggest freestyle events in Europe,
  • Zürifäscht, a triennial public festival featuring music, fireworks, and other attractions throughout the old town. It is the largest public festival in Switzerland, attended by up to 2 million visitors. The next Zürifäscht is scheduled for July 2 to 4, 2010.

    Art Movements born in Zürich

  • Zürich is the home of the Cabaret Voltaire where the Dada movement began in 1916 . Visit at the Spiegelgasse/Niederdorf-Corner the Cabaret Voltaire Museum.
  • Constructive Art Movement took also one of the first steps in Zürich. Artists like Max Bill, Marcel Breuer, Camille Graeser or Richard Paul Lohse had their ateliers in Zürich, which became even more important after the takeover of power by the Nazi-Regime in Germany and World War II. Visit the museum at the Haus Konstruktiv.

    Opera, Ballet and Theaters

  • Zürcher Opernhaus: one of the most famous Opera Houses in Europe. Director is Alexander Pereira. Once a year elegant and exclusive Zürcher Opernball with the President of the Swiss Confederation and the economic and cultural élite of Switzerland.(External Link)
  • Schauspielhaus Zürich: Main Theater-Complex of the City. Has two Dépendances: Pfauen (historic old theater) in the Central City District and Schiffbauhalle (modern architecture in old industry-halls) in Zürich West (S-Bahn-Station Hardbrücke). Was home for Emigrants like Bertolt Brecht or Thomas Mann and World-Première-Theater for Max Frisch, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Botho Strauss or Nobel-Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek.(External Link)
  • Theater am Neumarkt: One of the oldest Theaters of the city. Established by the old guilds in the Old City District, located in a baroque Palace near Niederdorf Street. Two stages with mostly production by avantgarde directors from Europe. Has both classic theater (Racine, Goethe, Shakespeare) and new productions in its repertoire.(External Link)
  • Theater der Künste: Official theater of the Zurich University of the Arts.(External Link) Next to the Theater Gessnerallee and the Bahnhofstrasse - the main shopping street of the city.

    Nightlife and Clubbing

    Zürich offers a lot of variety when it comes for night-time leisure. It became one of the capitals of Europe's electronic music scene and is the host city of the world-famous Street Parade, which takes place in August every year.
       The most famous districts for Nightlife are the Niederdorf in the old town with bars, restaurants, lounges, hotels, clubs, etc. and a lot of fashion shops for a young and stylish public and the Langstrasse in the districts 4 and 5 of the city. There are authentic amusements: Brazilian bars, punk clubs, HipHop stages, Caribic restaurants, arthouse-cinemas, Turkish kebabs and Italian espresso-bars, but also sex shops or the famous red light district of Zürich.
       In the past ten years new parts of the city have risen into the spotlight. Notably, the area known as Zürich West in district 5, near the Escher-Wyss square and the S-Bahn Station of Hardbrücke. This area has become the new up-and-coming part of Zürich with its avant-garde cinemas, music clubs, lounges, restaurants, cafés and bars.

    Sports

    Football is an essential aspect of Sports in Zurich. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) resides in town. The city is also home to two major Swiss football clubs listed in Switzerland's highest league; Grasshopper-Club Zürich founded in 1886 and FC Zürich which exists since 1896.
       Another popular sport in Switzerland, ice hockey, is represented by the ZSC Lions. The club won this seasons Swiss ice hockey championship. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) officiating as head organisation for ice hockey leagues worldwide is based in Zurich as well.
       Major sport events running in Zurich are Weltklasse Zürich, an annual athletic meeting, and the Zurich Open, part of the WTA tour.

    Notable people

    People who were born or died in Zürich:
  • Christoph Froschauer (ca. 1490–1 April 1564) Printer of the Froschauer Bible
  • Marcel Grossmann (1878–1936), mathematician, died in Zürich
  • Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), reformer
  • Conrad Gessner (1516–1565), naturalist, born and died in Zürich
  • Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672–1733), scholar, born in Zürich
  • Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), poet and physiognomist, born in Zürich
  • Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827), educational reformer, born in Zürich
  • James Sadleir (c. 1815–1881), fugitive swindler, murdered in Zürich
  • Gottfried Keller (1819–1890), poet, born and died in Zürich
  • Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825–1898), poet, born in Zürich
  • Johanna Spyri (1827–1901), author of Heidi, died in Zürich
  • Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia (1853–1920) Duchess of Edinburgh, died in Zürich
  • Carl Jung (1875–1961) Lived and died in Zurich
  • Wilhelm Filchner (1877–1957), explorer, died in Zürich
  • James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish novelist, died in Zürich (buried at Fluntern cemetery in Zürich)
  • Pancho Vladigerov (1899–1978), Bulgarian composer, born in Zürich
  • Felix Bloch (1905–1983), physicist, born in Zürich
  • Elias Canetti (1905–1994), novelist, died in Zürich
  • Max Frisch (1911–1991), novelist, born and died in Zürich
  • Hugo Koblet (1925–1964), cycling champion
  • Bruno Ganz (born 1941), actor, born in Zürich
  • Martin Suter (born 1948), author, born in Zürich
  • Lucinda Ruh (born 1979), figure skater, born in Zürich
  • Heinz Günthardt (born 1959), professional tennis player, born in Zürich Famous residents:
  • Tristan Tzara (1915–1919)
  • Richard Wagner (1849–1861)
  • Albert Einstein (1896–1900, 1909–1911, 1912–1914)
  • Vladimir Lenin (1917)
  • Thomas Mann (1933–1942)
  • Kurt Tucholsky (1932–1933)
  • James Joyce (1915–1919)
  • Udo Jürgens
  • Harald Naegeli
  • Tina Turner
  • Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
  • Andreas Vollenweider
  • Moritz Leuenberger
  • Kimi Räikkönen
  • Yves Netzhammer
  • Gustav BerthaFurther Information

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