The Polyterrasse
Old-town roofs, the lake, and the Alps on a clear day.
Baumschlager Eberle — CC BY-SA 1.0 · Roland zh — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Albinfo — CC0 · Roland zh — CC BY-SA 3.0
For a short visit the **Polyterrasse** is the answer: free, open day and night, two minutes by Polybahn from Central, and close enough to the old-town roofs, towers and lake to photograph them properly. The **Lindenhof** hill is a nearer, quieter alternative above the river. **Uetliberg** gives a wider panorama but sits half an hour away by train with the city small beneath you — save it for a clear day when you have time.
Yes, within limits. The main building is open during working hours and you can see its foyer, its grand staircase and the public spaces without a ticket, and the university runs organised tours at set times. But it is not a museum: lecture halls and laboratories belong to the students, and on Sunday you may find the buildings locked while the outdoor terrace stays open as always. The focusTerra museum on campus is the part genuinely meant for visitors, and entry there is free.
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It began in **1855** as the federal technical school known as the Polytechnic, and is today among Europe's leading universities in science and engineering; twenty-two Nobel laureates are associated with it, the best known being **Albert Einstein**, who studied here in the 1890s and returned as a professor shortly before the First World War. Its main building was designed by **Gottfried Semper** in 1864 — the architect of the Dresden opera house — and extended by Gustav Gull between 1914 and 1925, who added the dome you now see from all over the old town. Directly in front of it lies the **Polyterrasse**: a broad public terrace looking over the roofs of old Zurich, its church towers and the surface of the lake. It counts among the best views in the city, costs nothing, and never closes. Getting up there is a small pleasure of its own: the **Polybahn** funicular has run from Central since 1889, its red cars climbing forty-one metres in under two minutes, and an ordinary zone 110 Zurich ticket covers it. On campus, the focusTerra earth-science museum is **free to enter**. Remember this is a working university rather than a monument: keep to the public spaces, and to the quiet the students are working in.
Old-town roofs, the lake, and the Alps on a clear day.
An 1864 façade by the Dresden opera architect; the dome came later.
A free earth-science museum on campus (closed Saturdays).
Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zürich