Winterthur

Winterthur is twenty-five minutes from Zurich, it is the sixth-largest city in Switzerland, and its usual description — a former industrial town, home of the Sulzer engineering works — gives no hint of what is actually there.

Two families made fortunes here in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and spent them on art. The result is that a town of 115,000 people holds paintings that would anchor a national gallery.

The art

Museum Oskar Reinhart am Römerholz — Reinhart was a merchant who collected with unusual judgement: Cranach, Brueghel, Goya, El Greco, then Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec. It is displayed in his house, on the hill above the town, more or less as he arranged it. The house alone would justify the trip.

Villa Flora holds the Hahnloser collection — Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser bought directly from the artists they knew: Bonnard, Vallotton, Vuillard, Matisse, Odilon Redon. It is a record of friendships as much as a collection.

Kunst Museum Winterthur covers the twentieth century, strongly.

Three museums, all walkable, and taken together an afternoon that most visitors to Switzerland never discover.

Technorama

The Swiss Science Center Technorama is the best museum in the country to take children to, and one of the best hands-on science museums in Europe: some 500 exhibits, almost all of which you operate yourself, across physics, perception, water and electricity.

The lightning demonstration in the high-voltage lab is the one everybody remembers.

It is a bus ride from the station and needs half a day. On a wet day with children it is the answer to everything.

Fotomuseum

Winterthur also has one of the leading photography museums in Europe, in a converted factory, with a serious exhibition programme rather than a permanent hang.

The old town

Pedestrianised, compact, with a good weekly market and more bars per head than Zurich — it is a student town as well as an industrial one. Worth an hour before or after the museums, and there is a garden by the Kyburg road for a longer walk.

Kyburg castle, twenty minutes out, is one of the best-preserved medieval castles in Switzerland and reachable on foot from Winterthur in about two hours through the woods.

Getting there

• By train — Zurich HB 25 minutes, several an hour. Zurich airport is 15 minutes, which makes Winterthur a genuine option for a layover of half a day.
• On foot — the old town and the Kunst Museum are minutes from the station; Römerholz and Villa Flora are a bus ride or a twenty-minute walk uphill.

When to go

Any time; this is an indoor day. Museums close on Mondays, which is the one thing to check.

Combine it with around Zurich for the other short trips from the city.