Fountain sculpture

You are standing at the confluence of the Limmat and Sihl. Here, a weir controls the flow rate of the Limmat, and hence the level of Lake Zurich. In 1951 the old structure was replaced by this new weir. To mark the event a competition was organised to design a statue for the new fountain. The winner of the competition was the sculptor Robert Lienhard of Winterthur. First he built an actual size plaster model, and then the sculpture itself of Castione marble. It was solemnly inaugurated in 1955. Lienhard himself wrote of his work: “Where waters flowing at different rates come together, this creates eddies. From this came the image of the encounter of two water nymphs symbolising the two rivers. The idea is that one of them, the more animated one, represents the Sihl, and the other, calmer one, the Limmat.”