![View of the city of Zurich c. 1576, the Murerplan by Zurich cartographer Jos Murer, colourised.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/murerplan-zurich-1576-300x225.jpg)
A journey across Switzerland in 1608
Drinking and bathing habits, fashion preferences, dealing with death: the astonishing observations of English traveller Thomas Coryat (1577-1617) in early 17th-century Switzerland.
![Frontispiece to Thomas Coryat’s account of his travels, edition of 1611.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/frontispiz-des-reiseberichts-von-thomas-coryate-ausgabe-von-1611-209x300.jpg)
![The territory of present-day Switzerland c. 1622.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/das-gebiet-der-heutigen-schweiz-um-1622-300x219.jpg)
Me thinks it had beene much better to have reserved the arrow with which [Tell] shot through the tyrant, then the sword that he wore.
![The armoury in Zurich c. 1700.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/das-zeughaus-in-zurich-um-1700-300x141.jpg)
A man may live as cheape here as in any City of Switzerland or Germanie.
![Drinking session c. 1650. Print by Conrad Meyer, Zurich.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/trinkgelage-um-1650-druckgrafik-von-conrad-meyer-zurich-300x144.jpg)
Men and women bathing themselves together naked from the middle upward in one bathe: whereof some of the women were wives (as I was told) and the men partly bachelers, and partly married men, but not the husbands of the same women.
![One of the two baths on the Bäderplatz in Baden, in Johannes Stumpf’s chronicle of 1548.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/q-02-8213-die-offentlichen-bader-in-baden-aelteste-darstellung-ausschnitt-aus-dem-blatt-173-der-chronik-stumpf-1548-281x300.jpg)
![Men’s and women’s traditional clothing in early 17th-century Zurich. Illustration from Johann Heinrich Waser’s Itinerarium, 1621-1630.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/manner-und-frauentrachten-im-zurich-des-fruhen-17-jahrhunderts-282x300.jpg)
![Woman with a covered basket and long plaits. Baking mould, 17th century.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/gebackmodel-frau-mit-deckelkorb-und-langen-zopfen-16-jhd-dig-43332-lm-15168-169x300.jpg)
I observed many women of this Citie to be as beautifull and faire as any I saw in all my travels.
![A murderer is broken on the wheel. Depiction from the Wickiana, 1582.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/gerichtsverhandlung-wickiana-300x183.jpg)