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After passengers arrive at Zurich’s quirkily charming international airport and hear the cow moos and countryfolk yodels, almost all head south to the city centre or its immediate vicinity. For those who head northeast to Winterthur, a surprise package of gracious accommodation, fine dining, and stimulating cultural and outdoor activities await only a 15-minute train ride from ZRH.

Winterthur is often overlooked by visitors to the canton of Zurich in deference to the canton’s and Switzerland’s biggest cities.

Park Hotel Winterthur’s Bloom restaurant.

As appealing as big Zurich may be, it is said that good things come in small packages. A friendly, walkable city, Winterthur welcomes visitors in appreciation of the fact that they have done their research beforehand, or else they would not be here in the first place. Rather than making Winterthur a day trip from Zurich, spending a few nights at Park Hotel Winterthur provides pleasant accommodation upstairs, delicious meals, and easy access to the city’s charming attractions.

Especially in summer, when the hotel’s Bloom restaurant lives up to its name and seating is available on a splendid outdoor terrace facing the greenery of a small but abundantly verdant park. Staffed by unfailingly friendly young workers who imbue the property with a youthful vitality inspired by effervescent General Manager Philipp Albrecht, Park Hotel‘s central location makes an excellent base for exploring the museums, parklands, and other attractions without rushing off for the last train back to Zurich. Park Hotel‘s inventory of quiet rooms looking to the treetops includes unique suites such as the spacious Art Suite and Park Suite, but the airy lobby, bar, and restaurant seem to be favourite places for guests to spend time when not asleep on the comfortable beds.

Winterthur is known as Switzerland’s city of photography due to the presence of the Fotozentrum complex, which serves as the national photographic archives. The Fotozentrum houses both the Swiss Foundation For Photography and the Fotomuseum, one of the leading facilities of its kind in the world. Typical of understated Switzerland, the country has exerted a quiet but considerable influence on the development of photography worldwide as an art and visual documentation of the past and present.

Park Hotel Winterthur Art Suite.

The Swiss Foundation For Photography (Fotostiftung Schweiz) exists to preserve and present photographic works and acquire new ones essential for Swiss photographic history. The Foundation highlights the work of Swiss photographers in contrast to the Fotomuseum, which brings an international perspective to Winterthur with temporary exhibitions showcasing the work of photographers from other parts of the world.

Other art forms can be appreciated at the impressive Oskar Reinhart Collection, which will soon reopen after a renovation, where the paintings of Swiss artists fill the walls with colour. Swiss art is little known outside Switzerland, but the works of such artists as Félix Vallotton, Ferdinand Hodler, Karl Hofer, and Hermann Haller are both beautiful and evocative of a country whose fortunes only grew in recent times. For most of Switzerland’s history, Switzerland was a poor, agricultural nation; it has only been in its recent history that it has become one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

Winterthur’s atmospheric streets evoke Old Europe.

This status is reflected in the recently reopened Villa Flora, the former home to a wealthy family, now home to a billion-dollar art collection. The Kunstmuseum Winterthur, known in English as the Winterthur Museum Of Art, is the third institution in the newly formed Kunst Museum Winterthur group. The Kunstmuseum displays the presentation of art in various styles and eras logically throughout a splendid building. In addition to the works of Swiss artists such as Paul Klee, including a rare painting by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, more famously known as the architect Le Corbusier, there are stellar examples of works by Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Robert Delaunay.

As for outdoor activities, a walk down the historic streets of Winterthur’s Old Town will reveal a vibrant series of cafés, restaurants, and boutiques, while a walk up the hills to the vast parkland above Winterthur affords expansive views across the city below. On the edge of the city but easily reached by bus, the Wildpark Bruderhaus is home to a variety of animals such as lynx, bison, red deer, and European mufflon in naturalistic enclosures amid a vast expanse of a tranquil forest where the communion with the environment so well appreciated by the Swiss and their visitors is at its best.