While looking at the famous Murerplan in a shop window one day, my learned companion and I noticed the presence of a tower in the middle of the Limmat which is no longer there.

Further investigation led to the discovery that the name of this tower was the Wellenberg, that a tower had stood in this location since Roman times, and that it wasn't demolished until the middle of the last century, after having been used as a prison for a few centuries.



It was also clear that the shape of the top of the Limmat had changed - the Bauschanzli used to sit at the end of the lake, not in the channel of the river as it does today (the shore near the lake must have been drained to create the area leading up to Burkliplatz), and there used to be a small harbour up to where Hechtplatz now stands (now covered in the roads that enclose the Terrasse bar).

There used to be several buildings actually built over the Limmat, mills and suchlike, which are now long gone, but which are evident on very early photographs of Zurich.

And finally, there was a beautiful meat market hall on the side of the Limmat where the crane is supposed to be installed next year:



There are many traces of old Zurich, from place names (Hirschengraben, where they used to keep deer on pasture between the old city walls), to the shapes of roads (Bahnhofstrasse used to be a moat, the open area by Orell Fussli was a fortified gate).

What have other EFers found in and around Zurich? Do you have any photographs of now-demolished buildings? Paintings of long lost fortifications? Old maps and charts?

And do any of you divers happen to know if there are any traces of the Wellenberg left under the waves of the Limmat?

Where on earth did you find the map ?

It was only a print, but not a particularly cheap one, in the window of an art shop in the Niederdorf.

One day I'll buy it.

But not this month...

I'd be interested in this too.

(Do people go diving in the Limmat? I've never seen anyone at it - but then I guess I wouldn't, would I, if they were underwater?)

I did the same the other day.. but finally folded and bought my coveted treasure, while my entourage, scientifically inclined to doubt my onomatopoeia , looked on half bemused at my enthusiasm for the copy of old piece of parchment.
.. went home like a kid in a candy store

Have you checked google earth in regards to aero-archeology ?

Not yet, but that's an excellent idea! Thank you!

(Also, I'd be curious if anybody knows where I could get charts of the Limmat, with depths and contours or something like that... anywhere online? Or would I have to actually cough up real cash and buy some?)

Look what I just found!

Good find, DB.

You'll find lots of pics of old Zurich in this thread from the skyscrapercity forum:

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=564911

The mills were still there in 1948!

This is an aerial photo of the centre of the city, taken from the archive to which my previous post provided a link.

Do any of the native Zurchers on this board know when the mills were demolished?

And, while we're on the subject, can anyone remember when the station-side channel of the Limmat was converted into the underpass that now lies between the Coop and the row of buildings opposite the station? (It seems that the Coop was built on the land that is still a small island in this and previous photographs).

Amazing Calvin Thanks !!
Know whether one can find anything like this for Geneva ?

It seems in one of the pics, you could see the old Wicky chimney that used to stand just besides Glattzentrum. I could be mistaken. I always found it quite interesting to see how the new structures seemed to build around the old chimney.... sadly I don't believe it's there anymore

What I know for sure is that the place of the Coop still was an island in the 1970s. In the 'sixties it was a Globus outlet, then it was claimed by the '68 movement (Globus-Krawalle) as an autonomous youth center. Later (I think that was around 1970, but not quite sure) the building got turned into a branch store of the Lebensmittelverein Zürich (LVZ), which then was the Zürcher version of Coop. No idea what year the underpass was built. I have been trying to avoid Zurich for more than 30 years.

Sorry this is unrelated to the thread but I just noticed Cptn. Greybeard's signature line... I think that's the first time I've seen Rod McKuen quoted! As my laptop is scorching my legs I'm trying to remember where my Listen to the Warm album is....

Very interesting...I love seeing how cities in both the new and the old worlds change over the decades and centuries. Since we're such a young country you really don't get a sense of history prior to the Revolutionary War unless you really dig deep.

On a distantly related tangent, I'm very interested in seeing the history of Switzerland - I learned about the La Tene site near Neuchatel in my Celtic history class, for instance. I'd love to visit it.

Speaking of ancient ruins, isn't Zurich built on the site of some Roman waypost?

Unfortunately not. I only found a similar thread for Basel:

http://http://www.skyscrapercity.com...d.php?t=698858

Always thought the current course of the Schanzengraben was the same as the medieval moat, but looking at the map it seems to have been in the Bahnhofstrasse area (as the OP pointed out).

I'm not a Zürcher. I just spent a few years there. All I know is that the Schanzengraben was a fortification moat (that's what the word "Schanze" = entrenchment means), but probably post-medieval. The now Bahnhofstrasse area was the "Fröschengraben" = frogs' moat in the Middle Ages. It's up to the locals to correct me.

If you're actually interested and have some spare time, try these guys:

Baugeschichtliches Archiv Zürich - http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/...tleistung.html

They would have the most sources to investigate these things.

Zürich has a lot more to it in terms of scraps from the past than immediately meets the eye, so its well worth wandering around with open eyes and an open mind.

Unfortunately, many treasures have been destroyed in relatively recent times. For example back in the 90s a block of houses was torn down on Seilergraben and a big chunk of city wall was discovered that had been embedded inside those houses. Despite protests it was torn down. This is the site where the library now is.

While in that area, I recommend going into the music libraray which is in part of the Zenmralbibliothek block. Go up to the top storey. The ceiling is a beautiful piece of gothic stonework, that was once part of the choir of teh adjoining Perdigerkirche. After the reformation they cut the church in half by adding a wall and the choir bit was split up further by adding intermediate floors. While the main church has lost its gothic character under a rather nondescript baroque makeover, the library still retains the original gothic stonework.

The Bürkliplatz is named after a guy called Bürkli who was cheifly responsible for reclaiming that area. The lake shores were rather marshy in those days, and as you say, the town stopped well short of the present waterfront. As part of a bigger scheme to regulate the water level (preventing flooding etc) an area of land was reclaimed and a proper lakefront created in the 19th Century. Previously there had been a water course along what is now Bahnhofstrasse (originally part of the city defences) and this was blocked as part of the work. This why that if you look at the buildings, you will find there are a lot of very old (mediaevil) buildings in the side streets of Bahnhofstrasse, but none actually on Bahnhofstrasse. There wasn't a road here in those days but just the city wall and the moat. Also towards the lake you will find that the mediaevil houses stop about where Fraumünster is and beyond that towards the lake it's all 19th Century or newer. This was marshland previously to that. Also, there was no bridge at Bellevue until the earl 20th Century (about) and the first bridge was the one at Fraumünster.

Could be, but I doubt it as the Limmat was dredged at the time that the various islands were removed. The present day Coop at Hauptbahnhof stands on what was once an isalnd as there was once also a water channel between it and the houses. The road underpass you drive through when passing haupbhanhof headed for the Urania bridge is actually part of that former channel. When this was blocked they had to dredge the Limmat to make it deeper to take the extra water.