If you look up at the first floor of Mühlegasse 5, you'll spot the big geometric mural with the bold faded letters "KINO RADIUM" in blocky style-right above an Indian restaurant-guiding you to the old cinema’s home.
Now, let me whisk you back to 1907-a year when most people were still marveling at electricity, and movies were black-and-white mysteries that flickered on a sheet. This unassuming building, which you see now yawning its windows above the shops, was once Zürich’s playground for early film fanatics. The Kino Radium wasn’t just any theater. It was one of the first permanent cinemas in the entire city, opening its doors on October 12, 1907, when “movie magic” meant a hand-cranked projector and a live pianist banging out a dramatic tune.
Imagine the crunch of horse hooves as you walk this cobblestone street, because back then, right next door were stables-nothing fancy, just the smell of hay and the gentle sound of snorting horses. The cinema itself was squeezed into a former carriage shed, long, thin, and stretching to the back, with just enough space to pack in a hundred and fifty people on wooden chairs, though a cheeky advert claimed you could somehow fit 300. There was a certain honesty to it-well, except for the embellishments-turns out these early cinema owners were as good at stretching the truth as their silent movie villains!
From the beginning, the Kino Radium became famous-sometimes infamous- for its bold style. The owners loved to plaster the facade with posters, and in its heyday, every inch of what you’re seeing now was covered in colorful, shouty handbills and giant lettering. The building’s broad mural, painted in 1928 by Emil Morf, still broadcasts “KINO RADIUM” in fat Art Deco letters-a fluorescent billboard of its day. If you close your eyes, you might almost hear the music drifting out into the street, the chatter, and maybe a child giggling at a cowboy on screen, as the Radium was the go-to Western cinema, earning the playful nickname “Revolverküche”-that’s “revolver kitchen”-because it served up visions of the Wild West like nowhere else.
Of course, the path of cinema history is never straightforward, and the story gets a bit spicy in its later decades. After a golden age of silent films, when every show included a real piano performance, the Radium faced tough competition from newer, fancier cinemas near the train station. Eventually, it reinvented itself again and again-from Westerns to art house hits in the 1970s, and finally, in a twist worthy of any soap opera, ending life as a sex cinema before closing its curtains in 2008.
But wait-just when you thought the story was over, out pops a dusty plot twist! During the 2009 renovation, construction workers rummaged through the attic, moving aside creaky old timbers and, behind a wooden panel, stumbled onto a hidden treasure: a stack of about 90 film posters, handbills, and magazines, many now over 100 years old. These weren’t just leftovers-they were “the find of the century” for film historians: posters in two-color ink, illustrated advertisements for everything from wild American adventures to intense Russian dramas. Some were international, but many were made just for little Zurich’s own cinema scene. For historians, it was a peek into what your everyday Swiss “average Joe” moviegoer saw and how cinemas struggled with small budgets-think “Swiss Frugal Cinema.”
The discovery doubled the known number of Swiss film posters from before 1920-what a blockbuster! The restored posters are now housed in the Zürich city archive, lovingly catalogued so that the vibrant, competitive spirit of early 20th-century cinema lives on. For a few months in 2011, visitors could even walk through an exhibition, “Findspot Cinema,” at the Haus zum Rech, getting up close to the artifacts that made Zürich an unlikely film capital.
So the next time you pass this painted facade-preserved under monument protection-you’re walking through the echoes of laughter, drama, fierce competition, and a century’s worth of dreams flickering on an old silver screen. And who knows, behind these walls, maybe there’s still a hidden handbill or two just waiting for a sequel!
