The Florhof in Zurich closes as a hotel
Et is always a shock when places disappear that one felt to be an unchangeable part of a city and also of one’s own biography: When one realizes that the ancient house by the school, where one often stood as a student, has been torn down and replaced by a cheesy bright yellow condominium complex has been replaced with luxury apartments and gray paved parking spaces for the new residents’ gray SUVs, when the best takeaway on the beach has closed due to Corona, or when the Italian on the corner is gone and with it the remarkable taste of its carbonara.
One’s own identity is also made up of places where one feels comfortable and with which one associates memories. In the case of Zurich, the Hotel Florhof was such a place for many visitors to the city: less than five minutes from the lake, it is tucked away in Florhofgasse and, with its window shutters, the old, colorful gabled roof and its small dormer windows, it looks more like a very noble Country inn lost in the mountains in the big city. In fact, it was built in 1763 as a patrician house and has only been used as a boarding house since 1907.