Schipfe

This guide to Zurich's Schipfe lane follows the boatmen who once shoved flat river skiffs called Weidlinge up this bank of the Limmat, carrying silk, grain and wine to the city's markets. It traces the neighbourhood that grew around them: tanners scraping hides, a 1357 bathhouse whose master doubled as a bloodletter, and by 1830 as many as five hundred silk weavers at their looms in the Wollenhof. It also picks up an 1805 shipbuilding venture launched from this same bank. Look down at the cobblestones and picture centuries of cargo dragged ashore right where you're standing.