Winterthur, the sixth-largest city in Switzerland, is home to one of four minarets that can be found within the country. The Albanian Islamic Center, located at Kronau Strasse 6, is situated in the Industrial Zone of Winterthur. The center is a nondescript building, blending in with the other storage and warehouse buildings which surround it. From Kronau Strasse, unless you are actively looking for it, you would never know this is a place of worship. From the street you cannot see the minaret.
To view the minaret, one must go behind the building to the open parking lot area. Only from there can one see the diminutive minaret which adorns this warehouse building. At a height of only 1 1/2- 2 meters, the minaret barely makes a presence in the sky. It is not even close to as high as the smokestack chimneys from the warehouses surrounding it.
However, it is the only identifying mark that this is a place of worship. Equivalent to a cross on a small Christian church, the minaret acts as an identifier of the building's function. It serves to remind those that enter that this is a holy place where one can come to practice their religion freely.
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