History
The guild house was built in 1757 as a representative Baroque city palace of the Zunft zur Meisen on the Limmat river's left shore, in immediate neighborhood of the Fraumünster abbey. The former «Zunft zum Winlütten» (innkeepers guild) had its first guild house at Marktgasse. For the late 18th century's needings, the building was no more representative, and so an elegant Rococo palace in French style – with a cour d'honneur and elegant puddling door – was built by the experienced architect David Morf (1700–1773). Particular attention was given to the interior: The ceiling and wall paintings are by Johann Balthasar Bullinger, the masonry heaters by Leonhard and Hans Locher Jakob Hofmann and elaborate stucco ceilings by the Tyrolean master Johann Schuler.
The origins of the Urania Sternwarte base on a first observatory on the roof of the guild house Meisen. In 1759, the so-called «Astronomische Kommission» succeeded, to define from this location for the first time Culminatio solis, and thus they calculated the exact location of the city of Zurich on the globe.
In 19th century, Gottfried Keller and Ferdinand Hodler were among the most famous guests of the former «Café zur Meisen», in the 20th century Gustaf V of Sweden, Winston Churchill, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Jimmy Carter. The building is still a restaurant of the higher price class.
Read more about this topic: Zunfthaus Zur Meisen
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)