Open House Zürich 2020: Historical tour
The Open House Zurich 2020 – Zurich Historical Tour
The Open House Zurich is a fantastic event that showcases particular architectural sites, historical and modern ones, also to architecturally non-educated public.
Today we visited three fascinating archeological sites and time-traveled to the Roman and Middle-Age Zurich.
The Lindenhof is a beautiful, green park perched above the center of Zurich. Historically, the place is the origin of the city at a time when the inhabitants were not more than a few hundred. Excavations were carried out under the Lindenhof and remains of Roman buildings were discovered.
That’s what we witnessed during our historical city tour. During an evening with heavy rain we gathered on the Lindenhof. Right after the introduction, the guide opened the hydraulic door, leading to the underground. We traveled to the Roman-time Zurich. It is pretty amazing!
Ehgraben
Another archeological visit was to the medieval latrine system in Zurich. In the Middle Age the sanitation situation was rather weak and human disposal was simply dropped into a narrow corridor between buildings. This was then washed down to the Limmat which carried it away.
Zurich kept one of these corridors to explain and show the ancient sewage system, so we walked through a (now) clean lane to better understand how it worked. The door to this corridor is well hidden between two buildings in the Niederdorf. We passed so many times but never noticed it. The lane is rather wide at the beginning and gets narrower and narrower. At the other end, we had to squeeze through the exit door to get out on the Oberdorfstrasse.
Zurich City Wall Remains
Zurich was until early 1800 surrounded by a city wall. As the city expanded, the entire wall was dismantled to give space for the Bahnhofstrasse and other roads. However, some small remains stay under the Central Library witnessing how the city developed over time.
Fly, Hike & Travel. 