History of Zurich

Zürich has been continuously inhabited since Roman times. The name Zürich is possibly derived from the Celtic dur (water). It is first mentioned in 807 under the form Turigus, then in 853 as Turegus. The Latinized form is Turicum, but the false form Tigurum was given currency by Glareanus and held its ground from 1512 to 1748.

It is not till the 9th century that we find the beginnings of the Teutonic town of Zürich, which arose from the union of four elements: (1) the royal house and castle on the Lindenhof, with the king's tenants around, (2) the Gross Münster, (3) the Frau Münster, (4) the community of free men (of Alamanian origin) on the Zürichberg.

Similarly we can distinguish four stages in the constitutional development of the town: (i) the gradual replacing (c. 1250) of the power of the abbess by that (real, though not nominal) of the patricians, (ii) the admittance of the craft guilds (1336) to a share with the patricians in the government of the town, (iii) the granting of equal political rights (1831) to the country districts, ruled as subject lands by the burghers, and (iv) the reception as burghers of the numerous immigrants who had settled in the town.

Political power lay with the Grossmünster and Fraumünster abbeys during medieval times, until the guild revolt in the 14th century which led to the joining of the Swiss Confederacy. Zürich was the focus of the Swiss Reformation led by Huldrych Zwingli, and it came to riches with silk industry in early modern times.

Numerous lake-side settlements from the Neolithic and Bronze age have been found, such as those in the Zürich Pressehaus and Zürich Mozartstrasse. The settlements were found in the 1800s, submerged in Lake Zürich. Located on the then swamp land between the Limmat and Lake Zürich around Sechseläutzenplatz on small islands and peninsulas in Zürich, Prehistoric pile dwellings around Lake Zürich were set on piles to protect against occasional flooding by the Linth and Jona. Zürich–Enge Alpenquai is located on Lake Zürich lakeshore in Enge, a locality of the municipality of Zürich. It was neighbored by the settlements at Kleiner Hafner and Grosser Hafner on a then peninsula respectively island in the effluence of the Limmat, within an area of about 0.2 square kilometres (49.42 acres) in the city of Zürich. As well as being part of the 56 Swiss sites of the UNESCO Worl Heritage Site Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, the settlement is also listed in the Swiss inventory of cultural property of national and regional significance as a Class object.

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