In contrast to the sleepy city I remembered from a previous visit a decade ago – I found a frenetic city, interesting and full of thousands of street art works by diverse street artists using different techniques.
I started my wandering route in the city with the help of Dmitry Laptev who created a map for street art in Zurich. The map does not contain all the street art in Zurich, but certainly gives directions to the central locations.
In Zurich, you will find graffiti and street art mainly:
1. Around the railway tracks and train stations all over the city
2. In a number of neighborhoods and areas in the city center
3. In three community/cultural complexes that deal with street art, among other things
4. Graffiti bombing on vehicles and train cars
In this post I chose to upload dozens of photos from 400 graffiti and street art works I documented in Zurich.
Free Zurich Street Art Interactive Map
As I mentioned at the beginning, there are three cultural-community centers in Zurich that were also occupied by many street artists. But it is important to emphasize that even on a casual walk through the less central and bustling city streets, you will find a lot of street art and graffiti.
The first complex is the Rote Fabrik – it is a multidisciplinary cultural complex.
The gates to the complex are open and admission is free – the entire area of the large complex is filled with hundreds of diverse street art and graffiti works. You can walk between the paths in the complex, sit on the benches near the shore of the lake, eat at the cafe in the nearby park, and walk along the shore of the lake where you will be exposed to many graffiti and street art works.
The second complex is Oberer Letten – this is one of the banks of the canals that crosses the city center. Many of the locals come there to sunbath, swim, run and do graffiti and street art, mostly in this complex, but also on both sides of the canal, you will find hundreds of works.
The third location is located at 42 Josefstrasse – this is a neighborhood kindergarten that without the street art that adorns it, would not have been mentioned anywhere. The kindergarten structure looks like the ruins of an abandoned building that has been renovated and painted, added a few facilities (slides, ladders, etc.) and made the complex charming and unique, with a great many street art works with illustrations adapted for children.
If you want to discover the most interesting neighborhoods in terms of street art in the center of Zurich, I recommend to walk with the map prepared by Dmitry Laptev. The map helps getting around the city and understanding where the large locations of graffiti and street art in Zurich. On his website you will also find a gallery with hundreds of photos of graffiti and street art photographed by tourists and street art lovers.
