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:
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)