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:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)