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3 days in Zurich

A complete 3-day Zurich itinerary with 17 places, arranged so each stop is open when you arrive and the walking between them stays sensible.

Days
3
Places
17
Time in transit
313 min
Open this plan and change the dates

Why the stops are in this order

Most itineraries you find online are a list of places worth seeing, left in whatever order the writer thought of them. That is the part that falls apart on the day: you arrive somewhere at 17:40 and it closed at 17:00, or you cross the city twice because two neighbouring sights sat on different days.

This plan is sequenced instead of listed. Every stop below is checked against the opening hours of the place itself, and the gaps between them are real door-to-door travel times, not straight-line distance on a map. The visiting windows shown are what is actually achievable in a day.

Across all 3 days this route spends 313 minutes in transit — that number is the point. Reordering the same 17 places carelessly can easily double it, and that time comes straight out of your trip.

Day 1

09:00–21:30 · 6 places · 48 min travelling

  1. Central station

    09:00–09:00

  2. 11 min by public transport

    Fraumünster Church

    09:11–09:56 45 min

  3. 4 min walk

    Grossmünster

    10:00–11:00 1 hr

  4. Lunch

    12:00–12:30 30 min

  5. Lindenhof

    12:30–13:30 1 hr

  6. 12 min walk

    Swiss National Museum

    13:42–15:12 1 hr 30 min

  7. 12 min by public transport

    Kunsthaus Zürich

    15:24–17:24 2 hr

  8. 9 min by public transport

    Niederdorfstrasse

    17:33–19:33 2 hr

Day 2

09:00–21:30 · 5 places · 204 min travelling

  1. Central station

    09:00–09:00

  2. 47 min by public transport

    Aussichtsturm Uetliberg

    09:47–10:47 1 hr

  3. 66 min by public transport

    Zoo Zürich

    11:53–15:53 4 hr

  4. 31 min by public transport

    FIFA Museum

    16:24–17:54 1 hr 30 min

  5. 6 min by public transport

    Arboretum Zürich

    18:00–19:30 1 hr 30 min

  6. 54 min by public transport

    Laternenweg Uetliberg

    20:24–21:24 1 hr

Day 3

09:00–20:00 · 6 places · 61 min travelling

  1. Central station

    09:00–09:00

  2. 8 min walk

    Lindenhof point d'eau

    09:08–10:08 1 hr

  3. 20 min by public transport

    Museum Rietberg

    10:28–12:28 2 hr

  4. Lunch

    12:28–12:58 30 min

  5. Springbrunnen Aquaretum

    12:58–13:43 45 min

  6. 9 min walk

    Rotes Schloss

    13:52–14:37 45 min

  7. 6 min walk

    Blumenuhr

    14:43–15:13 30 min

  8. 18 min by public transport

    Zürichhorn

    15:31–16:31 1 hr

Make it your trip

The schedule above is built for a generic 3-day visit. Open it in the planner to set your own dates — the timings recalculate against the opening hours for those specific days, which matters more than it sounds when a museum closes on Mondays. You can drag stops between days, swap anything you are not interested in, and the rest of the day re-sequences around the change.

Open the Zurich plan