What to Visit on Your First Trip to Zurich

Zürich is one of Europe’s main financial and industrial capitals. The spirit of liberal thinking and intellectual life is part of a long tradition in Zürich, and this has been kept up in our time, making this city a great tourist attraction. With an Air Serbia direct flight you can arrive in Zürich in less than 2 hours.

We suggest 10 places to visit in Zürich if this town is your final destination. We are sure that while you visit them, you will discover at least as many more interesting places.

For the best view of the city and the lake, we recommend the place where the locals like to spend their weekends, the 871-meter-high Uetliberg. Southwest of Zürich, Uetliberg is the northernmost peak of the Albis ridge, easily reached by mountain rail, a train that departs from Selnau station all year round. The wide path is well lit at night and leads to the restaurant at the top, a glazed area with a beautiful view of the city lights below.

During the day, the view from the lookout stretches across the Alps, with the Black Forest in the north and Santisi in the east. From here, an easy walk to Felsenega takes just over an hour, where the cable car descends to Adlisville.

One of the finest art museums in Europe, the Kunsthaus is run by the Zürich Art Society and its history dates back to the Society of Artists founded in 1787. This museum has large and valuable collections, such as a collection of Monet's masterpieces. The Kunsthaus is characterized by Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and modern schools, starting with Delacroix, Courbet and Monet. Cezan and van Gogh are represented with paintings from the end of their careers - van Gogh’s paintings are from the last days of his life.

Lake Zürich (Burkliplatz) is a favourite spot for visitors, but also for the locals. Along the coast there are promenades and parks where visitors sunbathe, run, have picnics or swim in the lake. From here you can take a cruise on which you will have the opportunity to enjoy the view of the Glarus Alps and visit Burkliplatz, where Limat rises from the lake and which is near the Zűrichhorn Park, built for the 1939 national exhibition.

Often mistranslated as the Church of Our Lady, a more accurate translation would be the Women's Church, an abbey founded in 853 for aristocratic women by Emperor Ludwig and intended for his daughter Hildegard. This church is already an attraction in itself, but there is another detail that makes it stand out as the most famous in Zürich - a clock created by the painter Marc Chagall, which has been in the church since 1970 and consists of five stained glass windows.

From left to right, the picturesque windows show Elijah's ascension to heaven, scenes from the life of Christ. In the northern section, there is another impressive stained glass window, Heavenly Paradise, created by Augusto Giacometti in the 1940s. The abbey itself was demolished in 1898 to give way to the Stadthaus, but the Romanesque and Gothic cloisters survive, and P. Bodmer's 1928 paintings depict the legend of the founding of the monastery and the city's patrons, Felix and Regula.

Between Bahnhofstrasse and the left bank of the Limat, the western half of the old town of Zürich rises steeply to the peaceful Lindenhof in the shade of trees. There, the Romans built their fortified settlement in the fourth century to defend against migrations from the north. Five centuries later, the grandson of Charlemagne built a palace here as a royal residence. Long after the remains of these buildings disappeared, the site was still used for important ceremonies. Today it is a park with shady trees, benches, chess players and tourists enjoying the beautiful view of the river and the Old Town.

Bahnhofstrasse in Zürich is the city’s main pedestrian zone, it starts from the main railway station in Zürich (Bahnhof) and leads to Burkliplatz at the head of the lake. The 1200 metre street is one of the best shopping zones in Europe. The middle part of the street was built in 1867; the parts towards the lake and the station were built a few years later. Among the interesting buildings are several dating from the beginning of the 20th century: the Weber building (number 75), renovated in 1912 and 1928, and the Jelmoli department store complex on Seidengasse 1, originally designed with an iron skeleton. In the basement of Bahnhofstrasse 31, the Uhrenmuseum Beier Zürich displays a large collection of clocks, from sun, oil and water clocks to some with wooden wheels and Nuremberg pendulum clocks.

Along the Limmatquai, a popular shopping street on the river bank, there are a number of elegant old guild houses with sumptuous interiors that reflect the wealth of the guilds that ruled the city until 1789. Many of them now have restaurants, so you can also enjoy the interiors of the buildings themselves. What you will easily find is the Rathaus, the town hall. This has wide arches and rises above the river. It dates from the period 1694-1698 and was built in the late Renaissance style. What also makes it special is the festive hall in the Baroque style with its luxurious decoration.

The cultural history of the whole of Switzerland is hidden in a castle whose appearance evokes a neo-Gothic style. When you visit the museum, you can see important cultural and historical exhibits from the whole country, over 800,000 of them. These artefacts cover the period from prehistory to the 20th century.

Some collections of artefacts discovered in Switzerland date from the period of 100,000 years BC to about 800 AD. The settings are thematically divided into four parts: early migration and settlement, economic development, political history, intellectual and religious history. The museum is also known for its rooms that represent the furniture of certain periods. Their sequence follows the development of home interiors and evokes the change in tastes and needs over the centuries up to modern times.

Baron Eduard von der Hejdt owned an interesting collection of works of art that can be seen in the museum in this neoclassical building. This villa was built in 1857 for a German industrialist, and was modelled on the Villa Albani in Rome and quickly became a gathering place for intellectuals. Today, it is a museum of non-European art and in its collections it preserves Chinese tombstones, Indian paintings and sculptures, bronze works from Tibetan temples, Asian ceramics, jade and Buddhist tablets. This is only a part of the collection, the museum also exhibits items showing the art of the Middle East, the Pacific, Africa and North America.

It is difficult to single out the greatest attractions of Zürich, since the overall historical and cultural wealth of this city is so impressive. In addition to the places above, the curious visitor will discover other sights in the city. From Belgrade, you can reach Zürich by direct flight in less than two hours!

And for ease of reference, we recommend that you download the Zürich City Guide App that will make your stay in this unforgettable city much easier.