Zurich Enge Layover: Lakeside Parks and Art
Part of the full Zurich Layover: Old Town and Lake From ZRH
Zürich Enge, the station on the western lake shore a few minutes south of central Zurich, has the FIFA Museum directly opposite it, the Museum Rietberg in a wooded park uphill, and a free collection of 4,400 succulents down on the water.
Zürich Enge station’s granite curve on Tessinerplatz
The brothers Otto and Werner Pfister built this between 1925 and 1927, taking Stuttgart’s main station as the model and facing the whole thing in Ticino granite, which is where the square outside got its name. It is symmetrical about a central entrance with a large clock over it, and the front curves round the square in a shallow arc of round-headed arcades.
It reads as a civic building rather than a transport shed, which is unusual for a station this small: four minutes and one stop from Zürich Hauptbahnhof, and the sort of place people pass through without looking up at.
The FIFA Museum across the road from the platforms
Football’s governing body opened this on 28 February 2016 in the lower three floors of the Haus zur Enge, a ten-storey block on the corner of Seestrasse facing the station. It runs to 3,500 square metres and over a thousand objects, covering every men’s and women’s World Cup, and the original World Cup trophy is in it, along with a multimedia hall of LED screens and what the museum claims is the largest pinball machine ever built. Opening is Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm with last entry at 5.30, closed Mondays.
An hour and a half does it properly, and admission booked ahead saves standing at the desk on an afternoon when a tour group has just arrived.
Villa Wesendonck and the Museum Rietberg in the Rieterpark
Ten minutes uphill from Tessinerplatz, a pale classical villa sits at the top of a landscaped park of old cedars and lawns, with a circular pond on the terrace in front of it. The city bought house and park together in the early 1940s and converted the villa into a museum, which opened in May 1952 and still carries the name of the family who built it rather than an institutional one.
The Museum Rietberg occupies it and two neighbouring houses, holding around 23,000 objects of art from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. Most of the exhibition space is not in any of them: Alfred Grazioli and Adolf Krischanitz buried it under the lawn in 2007, and all you see above ground is a green glass entrance pavilion, which the museum calls the Emerald. Adults pay CHF 18, it opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm and until 8pm on Thursdays, and it closes on Mondays.
The park around it is free and open, and that is the point of coming here rather than to a museum quarter: this is a stop built on lawns, benches and a shoreline path, where the appeal is being able to sit down on grass for twenty minutes, which a bag parked beside you cancels out.
The city’s free succulent collection on the Mythenquai
Zurich has kept a municipal collection of desert plants on the lake shore since 1931, and it is still free to walk into: seven glasshouses, outdoor frames and a rockery holding over 4,400 species from 79 plant families, which the collection estimates is roughly half of every succulent species described anywhere.
It opens daily from 9am to 4.30pm, which makes it one of the few things in this part of the city that does not shut on a Monday, and half an hour is enough unless you get interested. The lake path runs past the door, so it slots into a walk rather than needing a detour, and a few minutes further along the shore there is a lido with lawns and swimming through the summer.
One ticket covers Enge, the main station and the airport
Enge is one stop from Zürich Hauptbahnhof, about four minutes, with several trains an hour. From there SBB services reach the station under the Zurich Airport terminal in 10 to 15 minutes depending on whether you get a through InterCity or an S-Bahn, leaving roughly every 10 minutes.
CHF 7.20 buys an adult second-class single across the three ZVV zones and covers the whole run, change included, valid for an hour. Working back from a flight, allow about two hours from the Rieterpark to your gate at ZRH: the walk down, the two rides, collecting the bag and check-in.
What Enge offers that the old town on the Limmat does not is room. Three of the four stops here are outdoors or barely indoors, the distances are short, and the only thing that will spoil the afternoon is arriving on a Monday, when both museums are shut and only the glasshouses and the shore are left.
Frequently asked questions
What is open around Zürich Enge on a Monday?
Not much of this. The FIFA Museum and the Museum Rietberg both close on Mondays. The succulent collection on the Mythenquai stays open daily from 9am to 4.30pm and costs nothing, and the Rieterpark and the lake shore have no gates at all, so a Monday here is a walking and greenhouse afternoon rather than a museum one.
Is the succulent collection really free?
Yes, with no ticket desk to pass. Seven glasshouses plus outdoor frames and a rockery hold more than 4,400 species from 79 plant families, which the collection reckons is around half of every succulent species known. It opens daily, 9am to 4.30pm, and half an hour covers it comfortably.
How much of the Rieterpark can you see without paying?
All of the park itself. The grounds are public and ungated, so the lawns, the old cedars, the terrace with its circular pond and the outside of the Villa Wesendonck cost nothing, and the green glass pavilion over the underground galleries is visible from the same lawn. The CHF 18 only buys what is inside, which on a warm afternoon is a reasonable thing to skip.
Can you swim near Zürich Enge?
In season, yes. The Mythenquai lido sits on the western shore a few minutes past the succulent glasshouses, with lawns, jetties and a stretch of lake roped off for swimming, and it charges admission through the summer months. Out of season the promenade itself stays open year round and costs nothing.