Augustinergasse

This guide to Augustinergasse in Zurich follows one address through its trades: a pharmacist named Christoph Locher who built an elegant house here in 1838 for grinding tinctures and salves, and the butcher who bought it forty years later and gutted the apothecary counter for a meat shop. It widens out to the lane itself, once a corridor of Augustinian monks, then a crowded row of shoemakers, tailors and potters after the monastery closed, and later a stage where wealthy merchants competed for the showiest carved facade. Look up at the bay window by the door for a detail that outlasted every trade that ever worked beneath it.