A powerful foghorn has been installed on the tallest building in Zurich as part of a maritime-themed art project, and will sound at irregular intervals well into 2015.
The horn was designed for container ships that are at least 200m (656ft) long, and it's apparently so loud it needed special permission from the Swiss "noise police", the Neue Zuercher Zeitung reports, external. It can be heard from 17km (10.6 miles) away and requires a 50m safety distance. The horn will be sounded on 10 May for the first time.
The horn is part of the Zurich Transit Maritim, external project, for which an old sea port crane has already been installed, external on the city's Limmatquai. Residents have reportedly had a mixed reaction to the crane. A Tages-Anzeiger blog post, external condemns it as a "monument to the triviality and intellectual poverty of today's culture industry". As for the horn, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung says it will sound "quite pleasant from a distance, more pleasant in any case than the night-time tolling of some bells."
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