Qibla Direction in Zurich, Switzerland

How to face the Qibla in Zurich

1. With your phone: tap Open the live Qibla compass, allow location (and, on iPhone, motion access), then turn slowly until the Kaaba on the dial reaches the mark at the top.
2. With a regular compass: hold it flat, turn it until the needle sits on N, then face 121.3° on the dial. That is the magnetic bearing; reading 125.0° off a magnetic compass would leave you about 3.7° off.
3. With the map: open the live compass, switch to Map and follow the gold line from your position to the Kaaba. It does not use the compass at all.

If a phone compass looks wrong, move the phone in a figure-eight a few times, away from laptops, speakers, car dashboards and magnetic cases, and hold it flat while you turn.

Why the Qibla from Zurich points southeast

Zurich is 4,020 km (2,498 miles) from the Kaaba, and measured clockwise from true north the Qibla here is 125.0°, southeast. A straight line on a flat Mercator map would point 136°, southeast. That map stretches distances more the further you are from the equator, so the line that looks straight on it is not the shortest route. The shortest route over the globe is the great circle, and its starting direction from Zurich is the 125.0° bearing; the great-circle bearing is about 11° to the left of the flat-map line. Across the Western European cities on this site the Qibla runs from 116.3° in Marseille to 136.7° in Vienna.

Nearby cities

• Milan, Italy123.6° ESE · 218 km away
• Munich, Germany129.8° SE · 242 km away
• Frankfurt, Germany128.1° SE · 304 km away
• Lyon, France118.6° ESE · 335 km away
• Cologne, Germany126.7° SE · 412 km away

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