If you ever go to Zurich, there is a strong chance you will pass through its magnificent train station. The Hauptbahnhof — or simply Zurich HB — stands at the top of the 1.4km Bahnhofstrasse, one of the priciest retail boulevards in the world. Built in 1871, its neo‑Renaissance façade and soaring arches lend an air of old‑world grandeur to a street lined with high‑end watchmakers, jewellery houses and luxury fashion brands. It is also a major transit hub, with more than 419,000 people passing through every weekday.

I wonder, though, how many of them notice the oddity hidden in plain sight. On the concourse, just inside the main doors, a bulletproof glass box is set into the floor. Measuring 50cm by 50cm, it is sturdy enough to be walked over. Inside lies a golden ball, about the size of a cricket ball.

This was my second visit to Zurich and I had crossed the concourse several times, but had never noticed it. Not until our walking guide from Zurich Tourism had our small group gather round it.

La Boule d’Or Centenaire (the Centenary Golden Ball), she explained, is an artwork by the Swiss artist and musician Dieter Meier (some may remember him as the frontman of the electropop band Yello). Installed in 2008, it is destined to sit here for 100 years, but with a few outings. On eight dates already determined, it will be taken out and rolled exactly 12m along a wooden runway called the “Bois du voyage d’or”. Three of these have already happened, the last in 2016. The next one will be in August 2033 and the last in May 2108, after which it will be retired to the city’s Swiss National Museum.

If you’re like me, you’ll be doing the maths on how old you will be when the next one occurs – and probably thinking you won’t live to see the last one. And this is the point of the work: as Meier has said, it is a statement on humanity’s transience and insignificance.

German-speaking Zurich is Switzerland’s largest city, home to just over 400,000 people. Though not the capital — that’s Bern — it is the country’s financial engine, the headquarters for banks and global corporations and a place synonymous with efficiency and precision. It also has one of the highest GDPs in Europe, and this combination of wealth and discipline is evident everywhere: in its clipped parks and permanently swept pavements; in a public transport, a ballet of boats, trains, trams and buses; and in its busy citizens, a parade of tailored suits, designer heels and blow-waved dogs.

This offbeat ball in the concrete, then, may seem out of place. But it shows the very side of Zurich that I am here to explore. Beyond its image as a meticulous machine is a place that embraces creativity, art, and even absurdity.

Indeed, Zurich has long occupied an unusual cultural position in Europe. Neutral through two world wars, wealthy and politically stable, it has repeatedly become a place of refuge in times of turmoil — a city where radical ideas and serious art have found room to grow.

The walking tour focuses on Zurich as the birthplace of Dada, the so‑called “anti‑art” movement that took shape here during World War I. Switzerland’s neutrality made the city a refuge for artists, writers and political exiles, many fleeing conscription. In 1916, in a small nightclub called Cabaret Voltaire, they staged evenings of nonsense poetry, masked performances, strange sound experiments and absurd manifestos.

The aim was not beauty but rejection: a refusal of the logic and seriousness that, in their view, had led Europe into catastrophe. From this small room on Spiegelgasse, the movement would spread to Berlin, Paris and New York, helping to lay the foundations of modern and conceptual art.

Our guide expands on this as we wander across the Limmat River into the Old Town, with its narrow cobbled lanes and medieval façades. The twin spires of the 12th-century Grossmünster – supposedly founded by Charlemagne after his horse fell to its knees on this spot – rise above the rooftops, while the Fraumünster, famed for its stained-glass windows by Marc Chagall, commands the skyline across the river. In the quarter known as Niederdorf, we pause at some of the Dadaists’ favourite haunts and hear tales of its major characters, such as German poet Hugo Ball, who recited poems of entirely made-up syllables, and dancer Sophie Taeuber-Arp, who performed experimental numbers wearing weird, sculptural costumes.

A plaque at Spiegelgasse 14 notes that the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin lived there from 1916 - 1917, and just a few steps on is the famed cradle of Zurich’s artistic revolution, the Cabaret Voltaire itself. It still operates under the name, a cramped and colourful cafe and bar with an exhibition space upstairs.

COLLECTED, CONTESTED

A quick tram ride away, the Kunsthaus occupies a far grander stage. Switzerland’s largest art museum, its collection runs the full arc of art history — from medieval devotional paintings to the most experimental work of today. It also has the world’s largest collection of objects from the Dada movement, with exhibitions that change every three months.

The museum spans two buildings on opposite sides of Heimplatz. The original Moser building, opened in 1910, carries visitors from medieval altarpieces through German Expressionism to major modern figures including Alberto Giacometti and Edvard Munch.

Out on the street stands another heavyweight: Rodin’s monumental Gates of Hell, a dark bronze doorway writhing with figures from Dante’s Divine Comedy, both masterful and unsettling. It’s a fitting precursor, perhaps, to the display that waits inside the museum’s 2021 extension across the street.

It is in the Chipperfield building, named after its British architect Sir David, that the Kunsthaus houses its most contested works: the on‑loan collection of Emil Bührle. Many of the paintings — and the signatures on them — are dazzling: Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renoir, Picasso, Modigliani. The controversy lies in their donor’s backstory.

An arms manufacturer, Bührle built his fortune largely through weapons sales to Nazi Germany and its allies, becoming at one point the richest man in Switzerland. While the source of his wealth is problematic in itself, he also acquired his collection between 1936 and 1956, years when the European art market was profoundly distorted by Nazi looting, forced sales and the aftermath of war. Some of the works have been traced to Jewish collectors whose property was confiscated or sold for a fraction of its value as families fled persecution.

In 2021, public backlash over the museum’s showing the works prompted an intensive effort to investigate their provenance. The result was a new exhibition that placed the paintings alongside texts detailing the often harrowing histories of their former owners. One example is Renoir’s portrait of a young girl, Irène, hanging beside the story of her daughter, who was given the painting by her grandmother and later murdered in a concentration camp. The painting was seized, restituted after the war, and eventually entered Bührle’s collection.

There are many such stories of confiscation, flight and loss, and encountering these luminous works through that lens gives their beauty a profound ache. The dispute over their display, meanwhile, continues. I only learn after my visit that in October 2023, before the revised exhibition opened, the committee appointed to guide the museum resigned en masse, saying the presentation did not go far enough. Despite this, the exhibition proceeded, closing only late last year. This month, the Kunsthaus launches a new display titled In Transition. The Bührle Collection — a clear concession that this chapter is far from closed.

A LIGHTER NOTE

In another room of the Chipperfield building, Swiss visual artist Pipilotti Rist shifts the mood entirely. Her Pixelwald Turicum is a forest of light and sound — around 3,000 LED spheres encased in crystal‑like shells and suspended at varying heights from the ceiling. Visitors weave among them as the lights pulse softly in sync with ambient sound. Immersive, dreamy and gently disorienting, the installation is a vivid expression of Zurich’s ongoing flirtation with the avant‑garde.

That creative impulse surfaces well beyond museum walls. In the big top of Circus Knie — a century‑old Swiss institution — acrobats, contortionists and dancing horses perform with a theatricality that feels, in its own way, descended from the Dadaists’ delight in spectacle and subversion.

And at the Michelin‑starred restaurant IGNIV, even dinner becomes a form of performance: tiny plates arrive like miniature stage sets, each one a careful choreography of colour, texture and precision.

I leave Zurich, of course, on a train to the airport, crossing the Hauptbahnhof one last time. I don’t pause to look, but I know the golden ball is there — patient, faintly absurd — amid the late‑afternoon rush. A fine footnote reminder that creativity here hums underfoot, glows in darkened rooms, unfurls beneath circus tents and confronts hard questions.

Zurich may not shout from the top of travellers’ cultural wish‑lists in the way that Paris or London do — but it is beckoning politely. You won’t be sorry if you accept.

PLAN YOUR TRIP

STAYING:

25hours hotel Zürich West: Design‑forward hotel with playful touches; a tram stop outside; and an Italian restaurant and bar. The Zurich University of the Arts next door lends it a younger, creative air.

EATING:

IGNIV by Andreas Caminada: Two‑Michelin‑starred restaurant in Zurich’s Old Town uses a sharing‑plates format, with intricate dishes designed to be passed around. It also has a notoriously long waiting list.

Odeon: Open since 1911, this café is the former haunt of intellectuals including the Dadaists, Einstein, James Joyce and Lenin. The menu includes champagne and oysters, as well as brasserie‑style staples such as salads, burgers and beef tartare.

Tibits Bistro: A vegetarian and vegan bistro serving salads, soups, juices and wine in a cafeteria-style setting. Diners help themselves buffet‑style and pay for their plates by weight.

GOOD TO KNOW:

The Zürich Card gives the holder free travel on public transport and free or reduced admission to more than 40 museums. See zuerichcard.ch

• Sleith was a guest of Switzerland Tourism.