Technorama, Winterthur

Technorama is a science centre in the industrial city of Winterthur and it has almost no display cases. Around five hundred stations are there to be pulled, turned, spun and got wrong, arranged loosely by subject over several floors: waves and water, magnetism, light and colour, mechanics, and mathematics that only makes sense once your hands are on it. Staff run demonstrations through the day, the best known being the high-voltage show, where sparks jump across a darkened room. Outside there is a park of large water and wind machines that runs through the warm months. It is aimed at children but built well enough that adults stay a good deal longer than they meant to.

What you actually see

• The high-voltage show - sparks and artificial lightning demonstrated in a darkened hall.
• The water floor - waves, vortices and flow experiments worked by hand.
• Light and colour - mirrors, lasers and optical effects across a whole level.
• The outdoor park - large water and wind machines, open in the warmer months.

When to go

Open daily. Weekday mornings in term time belong to school classes, while weekends and school holidays fill with families and the popular stations grow queues. Late afternoon thins out noticeably. The outdoor park runs roughly from spring to autumn and closes in winter, so a summer visit gets more for the same ticket price.

Honest expectations

It is loud and physically busy, which is the point but tiring after two hours. Some stations are broken or under repair on any given day. The ticket is not cheap, and Winterthur is a twenty-minute train ride out of Zurich plus a bus at the far end. Explanatory panels are thin and much of the material is in German only.

Nearby

Winterthur has its own well-regarded art collections down in the town.