Zurich keeps three kinds of collection within a short stretch of the Limmat: things made to be used, things that tell the story of a country, and things made only to be looked at. This route takes them in that order, with a park and a church to slow you down between the big buildings, and ends at the opera by the lake.
Design on Ausstellungsstrasse
Start at the Museum für Gestaltung, the design museum. Its main building went up for the museum and the arts and crafts school, which moved in in 1933, and it was drawn by Adolf Steger and Karl Egender. What sits behind the plain façade is a collection on a scale that surprises people: around 330,000 posters, plus Swiss product design, packaging, glass, ceramics and textiles.
A country in objects
The Landesmuseum, the Swiss National Museum, stands beside the main station and tells Swiss history from its earliest traces to the present. Its permanent shows are called Archaeology Switzerland, History Switzerland and The Collection, and the museum holds well over 800,000 objects, so choose one section rather than trying all of them.
The park behind the museum
The Platzpromenade, better known as the Platzspitz, is the wedge of land where the Sihl meets the Limmat. In 1883 it held Switzerland's first national exhibition, and the bandstand from that event still stands in the park. The Landesmuseum was started only a little over ten years later. In the late 1980s the park was known abroad for an open drug scene that was cleared in 1992; today it is just a place with old trees.
A Romanesque surprise
Not every stop has to be a museum. The Liebfrauenkirche was built in 1893 and 1894, and August Hardegger designed it in Romanesque Revival style, modelled on an early Christian basilica. It sits on a raised terrace above the street.
Painting at the Heimplatz
The Kunsthaus is the city's art museum, and since the Chipperfield extension opened in 2020 it has been the largest in Switzerland. The new building brought in the Bührle collection on long-term loan, about 200 works by Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin and Van Gogh. The loan also comes with a public debate about how the arms dealer Emil Bührle acquired some of his pictures.
Curtain call at the lake
End at the Opera House on Sechseläutenplatz. The old theatre on the site burned down in 1890, and the Viennese firm Fellner & Helmer built its replacement in sixteen months. It opened in 1891, and has been called the Opernhaus since 1964.
The route runs from posters to national history to Impressionist painting, and finishes with a house built for singing. Each stop answers a different question about what a city keeps and why, and all of them are a short stroll from the next.