Zürich's Town Hall

This guide to Zurich's Town Hall opens with a puzzle the city's own records leave unsolved: why fireworks lit up the Limmat on June 15th, 1698, a full week before the building was actually finished. You'll hear about the two sculptors, Giovanni Maria Ceruto from Lugano and local carver Johann Jakob Keller, who cut the gilded lions still guarding the black marble portal, one gripping a sword and the other a palm branch that started out as something else entirely. Step inside and the old council chamber, the Ratslaube, still wears its original walnut and stucco from that same June.