Page 4: Zurich

Grossmünster, a protestant church not a Catholic cathedral, under stormy skies.

 

The wooden stairway inside one of the towers...

 

...which gives a nice view over the city.

 

Pavillon Le Corbusier near Lake Zurich. I was force-fed Le Corbusier in Cornell's Architecture School, but this is one of his buildings that I truly like.

 

Staircase in the Swiss National Museum.

 

Sorry about all the photos of rooms with light streaming in through the windows, but I'm learning how to adjust photos for HDR rendering and display, and these are challenging examples. When done well, it no longer looks like a photo; it looks like you are there.

 

A decorated ceramic furnace with seats on both sides (only one is visible here). There is a gap behind the tower, through which the couple could converse while keeping warm.

 

Guilded armillary sphere. You can distinguish real gold from gold-colored paint because reflections from paint, like those from plastic or glass, are white (at least under white light), while reflections from metals are the color of the metal. This distinction is more evident in an HDR rendering.

 

Zurich's St. Peter's, whose tower holds the largest church clock face in Europe.

 

The refined baroque interior of St. Peters.

 

Fraumünster, another of Zurich's main churches.

 

Its organ, whose pipes are another "conceit" subject for HDR photography. ;-)

 

Stained-glass windows by Marc Chagall.

 

A unique "silent room" in one corner of the church. On the table is an ancient (1700s?) bible, astonishly left open and unprotected.

 

With infinite care and two hands on every page (I am trained in the handling of rare books), I turned to my favorite Proverb, 11:29. Translating from the German: He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.

 

On our last day we borrowed bicycles from our hotel and paid a visit to the zoo.

 

Since it was a hot day, most of the animals were resting in the shade.

 

Except the rhinoceros, who paid the sultry weather no heed.

 

The setting sun glints off the church clocks on our last day in this enchanted city.