Zurich hides a radical art history behind its banking facade: Dada started here in 1916, Le Corbusier built his final work on the lakeshore, and the west-side breweries and viaducts now house the country's sharpest contemporary galleries.
Switzerland's largest art museum runs from Fuseli's nightmares to the largest Munch holding outside Norway. David Chipperfield's 2021 limestone extension across Heimplatz doubled the floor space. Wed-Fri until 20:00.
Le Corbusier's final building (1967), a steel frame clad in bright enamel panels, commissioned by designer Heidi Weber for her collection. The parasol roof floats free of the structure. Open May to late November, Tue-Sun 12:00-18:00.
Switzerland's only museum devoted to non-European art, set in Villa Wesendonck where Wagner wrote the Wesendonck Lieder. The green-glass Emerald entrance sinks underground into Chinese, Indian, Japanese and West African galleries.
A former brewery block stacked with Kunsthalle Zürich, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Galerie Eva Presenhuber and Hauser & Wirth. One combined ticket covers both institutions across five floors of raw concrete.
Gustav Gull's 1898 turreted castle behind the Hauptbahnhof tells Swiss history from Carolingian wood carvings to Reformation-era prints, with a folded concrete extension added by Christ & Gantenbein in 2016. Thu until 19:00.
Dada was declared in this narrow Spiegelgasse house on 5 February 1916 by Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings and Tristan Tzara. Now a bar, bookshop and performance room with a permanent display on the sound poems and masks.
The 1933 Neues Bauen building holds four national collections — poster, design, graphics and applied art — the home ground of Swiss typography and the Zurich poster school. The Toni-Areal branch shows the deep archive.
Fellner and Helmer's 1891 neo-baroque house on Sechseläutenplatz seats about 1,100, small enough that the back rows still hear unamplified voices. It runs opera, ballet and Philharmonia Zürich concerts most nights.
Constructive, concrete and conceptual art inside a 1930s transformer station on the Sihl. The centrepiece is Fritz Glarner's reconstructed Rockefeller Dining Room of 1963-64, alongside Max Bill and Camille Graeser.
Thirty-six arches of an 1894 railway viaduct were converted in 2010 into studios, galleries and a market hall. Next door, Frau Gerolds Garten stacks shipping containers around raised vegetable beds under the tracks.
Schauspielhaus Zürich's second stage occupies an 1898 shipbuilding hall, reworked by Ortner & Ortner in 2000. Three auditoriums, the Moods jazz club below, and German-language theatre with English surtitles on marked nights.
A lakeside 1892 silk mill won for culture by the 1980 youth riots and city-funded since 1987. Concerts fill the Aktionshalle, experimental work the Fabriktheater, and the beer terrace sits directly on the Wollishofen shore.