The 1907 telescope
A 30 cm lens magnifying up to 600 times, still in service.
sidonius 06:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC) — CC BY-SA 2.5 · Roland zh — CC BY-SA 4.0 · roland zh — CC BY-SA 3.0 · roland zh — CC BY-SA 3.0
If the sky is clear: yes, within limits — looking through the telescope needs no language, and the dome and the instrument are themselves the experience. If it is cloudy the tour becomes a talk in German and there is little left in it for you; on that night take the lift to the panoramic bar in the same tower instead, at no charge, or postpone. Check the forecast on the day and decide in the evening — booking is not usually necessary.
They serve different purposes. Urania is a night-time astronomy experience costing around CHF 20 and it is about the sky, not the city. If you want a view of Zurich itself, the free options are better: the **Polyterrasse** at ETH looks over the rooftops and the lake, two minutes from Central, and the **Lindenhof** hill sits closer to the river. Keep Urania for the sky and the terrace for the city.
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A round tower rising some fifty metres above the western edge of Zurich's old town, built in **1907** as the city's public observatory and still doing the job it was built for more than a century later — a listed building, restored for its centenary in 2007. At its heart is a Zeiss refracting telescope weighing around twelve tonnes, with a thirty-centimetre lens and magnification up to six hundred times, mounted on a separate pillar that runs down through the building to the foundations so that visitors moving on the floor cannot shake it. On the evening tour the wooden dome is opened and the instrument swung onto the Moon, Jupiter or Saturn depending on the night and the season — lunar craters through a lens made in 1907 stay with you. Reckon with the conditions, though: **the tours are in German**, they run only three nights a week, and if the sky clouds over the observing is replaced by a talk under the dome. The same tower holds a panoramic bar (the Jules Verne), reached by lift, with a 360-degree view over city and lake — a drinks bar by nature, but with no entry charge and hot drinks on the list, and a quick alternative for anyone who wants the view without an astronomy tour.
A 30 cm lens magnifying up to 600 times, still in service.
Opened above your head at night — half the pleasure of the visit.
Zurich, the lake and the Alps on a clear day, from above the centre.
Uraniastrasse 9, 8001 Zürich