Like most progressive cities of Europe, Zurich has outgrown its feudal accouterments within the last fifty years.  It has razed its walls, converted its bastions into playgrounds, and, pushing out on every side, has incorporated many neighboring villages, until to-day it contains more than ninety thousand inhabitants.[35] The pride of modern Zurich is the Bahnhof-strasse, a long street which leads from the railroad station to the lake.  It is planted with trees, and counts as the one and only boulevard of the city.  Unfortunately, a good view of the distant snow mountains is very rare from the lake promenade, altho’ they appear with distinctness upon the photographs sold in the shops.

Early every Saturday the peasant women come trooping in, with their vegetables, fruits, and flowers, to line the Bahnhof-strasse with carts and baskets.  The ladies and kitchen-maids of the city come to buy; but by noon the market is over.  In a jiffy, the street is swept as clean as a kitchen floor, and the women have turned their backs on Zurich.  But the real center of attraction in Zurich will be found by the traveler in that quarter where stands the Grossmuenster, the church of which Zwingli was incumbent for twelve years.

It may well be called the Wittenberg church of Switzerland.  The present building dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but tradition has it that the first minster was founded by Charlemagne.  That ubiquitous emperor certainly manifested great interest in Zurich.  He has been represented no less than three times in various parts of the building.  About midway up one of the towers, his statue appears in a niche, where pigeons strut and prink their feathers, undisturbed.  Charlemagne is sitting with a mighty two-edged sword upon his knees, and a gilded crown upon his head; but the figure is badly proportioned, and the statue is a good-natured, stumpy affair, that makes one smile rather than admire.  The outside of the minster still shows traces of the image breakers of Zwingli’s time, and yet the crumbling north portal remains beautiful, even in decay.  As for the interior, it has an exceedingly bare and stript appearance; for, altho’ there is good, solid stonework in the walls, the whole has been washed a foolish, Philistine white.  The Romanesque of the architectural is said to be of particular interest to connoisseurs, and the queer archaic capitals must certainly attract the notice even of ordinary tourists....

It is also worth while to go to the Helmhaus, and examine the collection of lake-dwelling remains.  In fact, there is a delightful little model of a lake-dwelling itself, and an appliance to show you how those primitive people could make holes in their stone implements, before they knew the use of metals.  The ancient guild houses of Zurich are worth a special study.  Take, for instance, that of the “Zimmerleute,” or carpenter with its supporting arches and little peaked tower; or the so-called “Waag,” with frescoed front; then the great wainscoated and paneled hall of the “schmieden” (smiths); and the rich Renaissance stonework of the “Maurer” (masons).  These buildings, alas, with the decay of the system which produced them, have been obliged to put up big signs of Cafe Restaurant upon their historic facades, like so many vulgar, modern eating-houses.