Helvetiaplatz

The Helvetiaplatz guide in Zurich starts with a nickname locals still use with a grin, Cheib, old Zurich German for a dead animal, and traces why it stuck to this whole district. It follows the square back to when this ground across the river Sihl was unwanted marsh and pasture called Sihlfeld, where the walled city sent what it did not want, before textile mills and the railway filled the wet meadow with tenements faster than almost anywhere in Switzerland. Listen for the market stalls that still wheel produce across this square on Tuesday and Friday mornings, a habit older than the neighborhood's own name for itself.