Zurich’s wild side

On the green edge of Zurich, where this neat and tidy city melts into neat and tidy countryside, an icon of Zurich’s hedonistic heyday has been reborn. The Atlantis Hotel reopened last December, restoring an old landmark to the city and reconnecting prim and proper Zurich with its rebellious past.

If you’ve only ever been to Zurich on business, you may find it hard to think of this staid city as rebellious, but bear with me: Zurich really does have a wild side, and in the 1970s and 1980s the Atlantis was where it could be found. From Eric Clapton to Elton John, from Freddie Mercury to Frank Zappa, the hotel’s guest list reads like a Who’s Who of the golden age of rock. The Atlantis opened in 1970, and it made a big splash from the start. A garish slab of glass and concrete, even the architecture was an affront to bourgeois taste.