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Few cities in Europe carry the weight of Switzerland's reputation quite as visibly as Zurich. Perched at the northern tip of Lake Zurich, with the Limmat river threading through its medieval core and the Alps visible on clear days from the hilltops of the Zürichberg and Uetliberg, the city manages to be both intensely local and effortlessly international. It is the country's largest city and its financial centre, yet the old town, the Altstadt, retains the texture of a place that has been continuously inhabited and carefully maintained for centuries. The Grossmünster's twin towers and the gilded clock face of the Fraumünster have looked out over the same river bend since the Romanesque period, and the guild houses along the Limmatquai still give the waterfront a civic seriousness that no amount of contemporary commerce has managed to dissolve.

The Altstadt divides naturally across the river, with the right bank's Niederdorf quarter offering narrow lanes, bookshops, and the kind of neighbourhood restaurants that fill with locals at lunch, while the left bank climbs toward Lindenhügel and the Fraumünster, whose Marc Chagall windows are among the most celebrated pieces of twentieth-century stained glass in any European church. Further west, the Langstrasse district has a rougher, more provisional energy, its streets lined with independent bars and small theatres that reflect a younger, more transient population. The Zürich Opera House, the Opernhaus, sits at the edge of Bellevue on the lake's northern shore, and its programme of opera and ballet is considered among the finest in the German-speaking world.