The Cabaret Voltaire is a unique temple to art.
For decades, the legendary Café Odeon was
the haunt of international intellectuals.
YOUR NEXT DESTINATION / January
excited by the European trend of reinvigorating
former industrial districts according to one and
the same vision and appearance, filling them
with identical cafés, shops, and beer gardens. As
managing editor of Baltic Outlook, I regularly
work with articles about travel and, as I select
photos for the magazine, I’ve come to conclude
that nowadays a picture of a café in Berlin could
just as well have been taken in Stockholm or
Riga. For me, travelling is linked with inspiration
and the expanding of our horizons, including
our inner horizons. But that’s difficult to do in
an environment that looks exactly like the one
at home. For this reason, Zurich’s legendary
Kronenhalle restaurant and bar earns my
absolute enthusiasm.
Established in 1924, Kronenhalle was originally
a meeting place for musicians, writers, actors, and
artists, with the likes of Coco Chanel, Yves Saint
Laurent, James Joyce, Richard Strauss, and Max
Frisch among its guests. Some of those guests paid
for their tabs with artwork, which is why guests
today can gaze at genuine works by Marc Chagall,
Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miró while dining. The
collection is worth many millions, but what makes
it unique is that it was assembled largely by one
man, the silk magnate Gustav Zumsteg, who lived
just above the restaurant until his death in 2005.
Zumsteg’s mother, Hulda, founded the Kronenhalle
restaurant with her husband, Gottlieb. According to
locals, all the ‘good’ families and politicians of Zurich
regularly dine here. With dark mahogany panelling,
emerald-green walls, and marble tables, the
restaurant is truly unforgettable, as are the cocktails
it serves.
All the ‘good’ families
and politicians of Zurich
regularly dine here
Just across the street stands another perennial
establishment for enjoying life, the Café Odeon. For
decades, this legendary Bohemian landmark was the
haunt of international intellectuals. Exiled writers,
painters, and musicians all found a second home at
the Odeon. Benito Mussolini, Stefan Zweig, James
Joyce, Albert Einstein, Vladimir Lenin – the list goes
on and on. Although aged (it opened in 1911), this
historic café-bar with high ceilings, mirrored walls,
and posters is still popular.
Speaking of legendary places in the Old Town,
the Cabaret Voltaire is also a must-see. Due to
Switzerland’s neutrality in the First World War,
Zurich became a haven for artists, philosophers,
scientists, and writers. Political exiles from all parts
of Europe and Russia arrived in the city, including
Lenin, who lived near the Cabaret Voltaire.
It was in this creative environment that Dada, a
provocative movement best described as a mix of
art and the absurd, emerged in Zurich. In July 1916,
German artist and poet Hugo Ball stood in the tiny
performance space at Cabaret Voltaire and read the
movement’s first manifesto, introducing the world
to a new concept in thought and culture. Dadaism
was the first conceptual art movement in which the
artists did not focus on crafting aesthetically pleasing
objects but on making artwork that often upended
bourgeois sensibilities and posed difficult questions
about society.
Still today, the Cabaret Voltaire is a unique temple
to art. It regularly hosts a variety of provocative
performances, exhibitions, and concerts – all in the
same building where one of the 20 th century’s most
influential art movements was founded a hundred
years ago, a movement that inspired surrealism and
nouveaux réalisme as well as performance art.
BUT ZURICH DOES NOT CONSIST ONLY OF
BEAUTIFUL MEDIEVAL STREETS, HISTORICAL
CAFÉS, AND MAJESTIC BANKS. In recent years,
the renaissance of the former industrial district