The Landscape Architecture Magazine ASLA just published a a well written article about the summer open air swimming options in the city of Zurich. In Zurich, the quest for something cool ends at the nearest badi LAM 06 June 2015_Zurich Badi.pdf

Image: Map of the center of the city of Zurich with all of the open air summer swimming options.

Letten Badi today

Image: Upper Letten in Zürich during a fantastic sunny summer day. Of course almost every square inch is in use. You will notice that nobody is swimming – probably just to fresh yet… :-)

Image: Another point of view of the Upper Letten Badi in Zurich. Today it’s a great place to just take a walk or have something to drink or just enjoy being there and watch all the people passing by.

Letten areal history

The history of the upper Letten in Zurich, Switzerland

The Upper Letten was until 1989 a railway station of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) railway network, on the right bank Zurich Seebahn, which was opened in 1894. The old railway route and the Zurich Letten train station were shut down on May 27, 1989.

When the nearby Platzspitz park in Zurich closed to the public, the open drug scene shifted from the Platzspitz park to the Upper Letten in the mid-1990s. The area of ​​the recently decommissioned Letten train station became the meeting place of drug traffickers and consumers and the permanent residence of many drug addicts. This was then known as the open drug scene in Zurich an experimental open drug market which had been permitted. When officials decided the situation had gone awry it was the closed down in February, 1995. This resulted in a reversal of the drug situation and an improvement of the quality of living in the city of Zurich. This time the police action was accompanied by national preventive measures.

Of course the drug scene did not cease to exist but it was changed from a open drug scene to a not public visible drug scene which is what we have today in Switzerland.

As a result, the Upper Letten was converted into a recreational area: lawn for swimmers, beach volleyball fields, improvising bars, take away restaurants and sports facilities complete the range of the two existing river baths in the Upper and Lower Letten Badi today.