Economist.com Cities Guide: Zurich Briefing - May 2005

News this month

Once restive, now restful

For years Labour Day in Zurich has seen broken shop windows, burning rubbish bins and other small-scale conflicts between left- and right-wing groups, but this year's holiday was mostly placid. Some 4,000 people marched to protest about a range of labour issues, such as the dismantling of social welfare and stagnating wages. But the day was not completely without violence: later, a dozen left-wing radicals and neo-Nazis threw bottles at each other, but ended their clash before police intervened. Increased police patrolling seemed to deter violence; only six people were arrested, compared with well over 200 in 2004.

Torn around the edges

Zurich's parks have seen a wave of vandalism. After several weekends, gardeners have found trampled flower beds, smashed flower pots, rubbish strewn about, railings bent and buckled and, in some cases, charred plants. Child's play, perhaps, but the vandalism seems to be escalating: fountain figures have been demolished and a baroque sandstone statue called “The Lying” was knocked over. Another stone figure in Seeburgpark was decapitated. Stone masons are carefully restoring both works, and fences are planned so that the gardens can be locked up after dark. But police lack the resources to constantly monitor the city's green spaces.

Table for one

The canton of Zurich seems to be growing lonelier. A study of census figures carried out by the canton's statistics offices found that households with only one person grew from 85,000 to 224,000 between 1970 and 2000. Couples are getting married later in life, and women are waiting longer before having children. The average age for a woman having her first child rose from 27 to 29, while the number of traditional, nuclear-family households fell from 158,000 to 139,000, despite the total number of households having grown 50% in the same period. Single parents and married couples without children are on the rise as well.

The weatherman burns

Zurich is a rather straight-laced town—swans glide on the lake, and the burghers are seemingly always well turned out. But on April 18th, it put on the Sechseläuten, an annual spring festival and one of its oldest and weirdest spectacles. The highlight is the burning of the “Böögg”, a huge straw man loaded with fireworks, meant to symbolise the end of winter. The explosion of its head is a sign of the coming summer. Superstition holds that the faster the effigy burns, the longer and sunnier the summer will be. Alas, this year it took exceptionally long: 17 minutes and 52 seconds. By comparison, two years ago, the Böögg's head burst into pieces in a record time of five minutes and 42 seconds, and was followed by an extraordinarily beautiful summer.

The Böögg stands on a 13-metre-high wood bonfire, which is lit at six o'clock (“Sechseläuten” means “six-o'clock ring”). While the fire gathers, guildsmen on horseback circle it three times. During their ride, the Sechseläuten march is played, and onlookers cheer. Before the burning, 3,500 guildspeople and their guests, along with 1,300 musicians, 1,000 children and 500 horses are paraded through the city centre for crowds numbering in the tens of thousands.

Gate crashing

A common sight in front of the glossy jewellery shops along the Bahnhofstrasse are two-tonne blocks between the street and stores, stolidly protecting against “ram raids”. But thieves are diligently finding other places to crash cars into. Zurich’s Kreis 9 saw another jewellery theft by ram-raiders recently. The burglars took the dearest baubles, at a value of tens of thousands of Swiss Francs. It seems the thick concrete blocks and rough stones—bemoaned for their utilitarian, unattractive design—will become more common.

Catch if you can

May 2005

Sarah Lucas: 50 Works

Until June 15th 2005

For better or worse, ever since her 1992 show called “Penis Nailed to a Board”, Sarah Lucas has been a seminal member of the informal grouping of young British artists that includes Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers—a collective that is often criticised as a bunch of low-concept, self-promoting publicity artists. Her work includes photography, collage and conceptual pieces that inevitably make ironic use of quotidian objects, and refer in inverted quotes to canonised works of art. If you like that sort of thing, you can see 50 Lucas masterpieces at this show, which will move on to Hamburg and Liverpool.

Kunsthalle, Limmatstrasse, 8005 Zürich. Tel: +41 (0)44 272-15-15. Open: Tues-Fri, 12pm-6pm (Thurs to 8pm); Sat-Sun, 11am-5pm. Entry: Sfr8. For more information, visit the museum's website.

More from the Zurich cultural calendar