The marble facade
Wagner, Weber and Mozart on the balustrade.
Roland zh — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Torbjorn Toby Jorgensen — CC BY-SA 2.0 · martin_vmorris — CC BY-SA 2.0 · kuhnmi — CC BY 2.0
Zurich's April spring festival: the guilds burn a giant snowman, the Böögg, in the square, and the speed with which its head explodes is said to predict the summer — the city's most famous folk tradition.
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An opera house on the lakeshore: Zurich's opera was built in 1891 after the city theatre burned, its Neo-Renaissance white marble front carrying statues of Wagner, Weber and Mozart, and it is today among the busiest houses in German-speaking Europe with some three hundred performances a season. Its history carries weight: the world premieres of works the Nazis banned in Germany were given here — Berg's Lulu and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler — when Zurich became the refuge of fleeing musicians in the 1930s, which gave the house a standing beyond the size of its city. The facade and the square before it, Sechseläutenplatz, are free at all times, and the square itself stages festivals, a Christmas market and the burning of the Böögg in Zurich's spring rite. Performance prices are tiered from reasonable upper seats, and backstage tours book at set times.
Wagner, Weber and Mozart on the balustrade.
Festivals, the Christmas market and the Böögg.
Falkenstrasse 1, Zurich