Paradeplatz

About this audio guide

This guide to Paradeplatz in Zurich starts with a plain grey wall bearing three brass letters, UBS, and the insult a British cabinet minister hurled at the bankers behind it: the gnomes of Zurich, hoarding money in the dark. It traces the square back two centuries earlier, when this same ground was a pig market outside the old city walls, then a produce market, before the new Bahnhofstrasse boulevard and a 1865 renaming brought the banks in almost overnight. You'll hear how UBS and Credit Suisse's predecessor built headquarters here within decades of each other, and how fiercely the gnomes guarded their clients' secrets. Stand near the tram lines and picture the mud and pig dung this pavement once was.