Turicum

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The Lindenhof and the Schipfe on the Limmat , the center of the Roman settlement

Turicum is the ancient name of a settlement ( vicus ) from Roman times in the center of today's city of Zurich . The majority of the settlement remains and artefacts found are concentrated around the Lindenhof , the Schipfe on the left and the Limmatquai on the right of the Limmat and around the Weinplatz . The place name of Zurich , attested since the early Middle Ages, is the phonetic development of Turicum after the occurrence of the High German phonetic shift , the i-umlaut and the apocope .

Celtic predecessor settlement

The earliest traces of human settlement activity in the area of ​​today's city of Zurich are the remains of wetland settlements of the Egolzwiler culture (4430–4230 BC), which can be detected in the area of ​​the western lake basin of Lake Zurich . The sites, which were also found during the later Neolithic , Bronze and Early Iron Ages up to 700 BC. Were inhabited, sometimes extend up to 500 meters into today's lake from the shore area, including the settlement areas Alpenquai , Bauschänzli and Kleiner and Grosser Hafner . During the Iron Age , settlement activity in the Zurich area shifted to terraces along the rivers and the lake. Individual and coin finds from the area of ​​the old town date from the 1st century AD . The Celtic Helvetians settled in and around Zurich, including the Oppida Uetliberg and Lindenhof . The Celtic settlement of around seven hectares was located around the Lindenhof. The strategically and technically favorable location as well as coin finds suggest the existence of a trading center.

Vicus turicum

Gravestone of Lucius Aelius Urbicus (around 180 AD) with the first mention of Turicum by name . Original from the National Museum Zurich

From the time of the Roman conquest of eastern Helvetia, ordered by Augustus , around 15 BC. A military base - according to the current state of research, but not yet a fort - and a customs station manned by Roman soldiers around which the civilian settlement developed. The open market town ( vicus ) Turicum belonged to the province of Gallia Belgica after the Roman rule was secured , and later to the province of Germania superior (Upper Germany) founded around 85 AD .

Surname

The ancient name of the settlement, as well as the fact that there was a Roman customs post there, has come down to us thanks to a tombstone for Lucius Urbicus, who died in infancy from the late 2nd century AD, which was found on the Lindenhof in 1747 and in whose inscription the father is identified as p (rae) p (ositus) sta (tionis) Turicen (sis) , as 'head of the Zurich customs office'. The place name appears again in the early Middle Ages in the forms Turicum , Turico , Doricum , Torico , Turigo , Turegum as well as with regularly shifted consonants in its Old High German form Ziurichi , Zurih ; it is unanimously traced back to the Gallic Turikon , but there is disagreement about its formation and exact pronunciation: With regard to the stressed -i- in Surselvian Turitg , ladin Turî as well as in the Italian form of the name Zurigo ( which was originally converted to German) , it is originally long (and thus stressed in Latin) -ī- assumed and derived from the Celtic personal name Tūros by means of an adjectival suffix -īko- . The objection has been made that the -e- the spelling Turegum, which has been common since the 9th century, reflects the regular Western Romanesque change from short ĭ to ĕ , which is why the suffix -ĭko- attested by other place names of Celtic origin such as Autricum , Avaricum or Aventicum should be added , which especially derives the names of waters, and therefore Turos or Tura probably denoted an estuary of the Sihl or even the Limmat ; The Romance forms of the name, on the other hand, only go back to the written tradition in the Middle Ages and were emphasized on the basis of analogy , e.g. Turitg after the likewise final amitg 'friend'. The sound development of name pairs such as Bourges < Bitúriges , Berry < Bituríges ; Condes < Cóndate , Condé < Condáte suggest that fluctuations in stress and vowel quality in place names of Gallic origin were not unusual.

location

The Roman Turicum lay at the foot of the Lindenhof , a central hill on the left side of the Limmat near the outflow from Lake Zurich. The settlement was largely surrounded by water in Roman times, as at that time a small tributary of the Sihl at Münsterhof, between Lake Zurich and Lindenhof, flowed into the Limmat or Lake Zurich and the main arm of the river meandered into the Limmat in the area of ​​today's Aussersihl . In Roman times, the lake level was about 2.5 meters lower than it is today due to targeted interventions by the Roman residents, so that larger areas could be built over. Already in 1977/78 geologists and archaeologists discovered during excavations on the Münsterhof that in the 1st century AD, when the lake level was extremely low, a "wild Sihlarm" extended over the later Münsterhof and deposited a lot of debris there.

Commercial and residential buildings

Commercial and residential buildings were probably located in the vicinity of the Lindenhof. The settlement could have extended between Rennweg and Münsterplatz to Weinplatz and the Schipfe or Limmat and probably also to the other side of the river at the Limmat Bridge. In the vicinity of the Zunfthaus zur Zimmerleuten , the area on the Limmat was stabilized with embankments; some of these embankments date back to the Roman settlement era.

Turicum was not fortified as vicus , but was grouped around a customs station (Quadragesima Galliarum), where goods and travelers were cleared before the transition from the province of Gallia Belgica to the province of Raetia , mainly on the water route Walensee –Zürichsee – Limmat– Rhine , as the settlement was not on any major main road. To date, only a few archaeological traces of Roman Zurich have been excavated, as the remains of the settlement are under the now densely built-up center of the old town. The remains of the public baths (Thermengasse), graves and traces of handicraft businesses, residential houses as well as objects of daily use and jewelry, but also of cult facilities, have been archaeologically developed.

Public buildings

Thermal baths

Remnants of plaster from painted walls from the bathrooms at Thermengasse
Remnants of window glass
Anointing oil bottle from Thermengasse

In 1983/84 the remains of two public baths ( thermal baths ) were discovered in Thermengasse near today's Weinplatz , the ancient harbor district on the Limmat . The first bath, which was modest in size, was built around 70 AD, with a frigidarium and bathtub, as well as two rooms heated with a hypocaust , a tepidarium and a caldarium with apse . Around the middle of the 2nd century AD, the original building complex was replaced by a significantly larger successor building. The actual bathing wing was now preceded by a spacious changing room with access to the enlarged cold bath. Attached to this, heated by the same firing room, were the tepidarium, caldarium and a large building that may have served as a lounge. The last change took place in the early 3rd century AD: The heated area of ​​the bath was enlarged by a renovation by expanding the caldarium and separating and heating part of the frigidarum with a new basin. Remnants of painted wall plaster and mosaic stones indicate an upscale furnishing luxury for the Roman province and soot and lime deposits indicate a lively use of the baths.

Cultic buildings

From the reign of Emperor Hadrian came a round temple made of wood on the Grosse Hafner in Lake Zurich. This island sanctuary , built in AD 122, consisted of oak stakes rammed deep into the lake bed - presumably with walls made of perishable material - that formed a circle around seven meters in diameter. The rotunda was located on the former island settlement, about 500 meters from today's lake shore. The finds indicate that the complex was safely used until the late 3rd century AD, possibly by the Roman population even until the 4th century. The interpretation as a temple is based on the one hand on the island location and the design, on the other hand on the coin finds typical of such a building. The majority of the almost 90 coins, however, probably belong to a previously unrecognized predecessor, probably from the third quarter of the 1st century AD. Ceramic material from this period is hardly available. On the basis of the found fragments of ledge bricks , another Roman building can be assumed, the location, appearance and dating of which are unclear. It cannot be ruled out that these cult buildings go back to a Helvetian island sanctuary in connection with the Celtic settlements of Uetliberg and Lindenhof from the La Tène period .

The church of St. Peter probably stands on the site of a Roman temple to Jupiter. Outside the settlement, on the road leading south, there was the cemetery and a small, round cult building, which enclosed a mighty boulder , where votive offerings in the form of coins were deposited until the 4th century AD . Another cult building and a four-god stone on the Lindenhof stood on Storchengasse . Another temple complex was probably located on Lindenhof-Sihlbühl (Urania car park).

Transport hub

Goods and travelers had to pass Turicum before entering the province of Gallia Belgica or Germania Superior if they were traveling on the Roman road between Vindonissa ( Windisch ) and Curia Raetorum ( Chur ) or on the navigable route between Lake Walen and the Rhine . A 2.5 percent duty was levied. The importance of Turicum is also related to its location at the outflow of Lake Zurich, as the goods had to be reloaded from sea to river vessels here. Turicum was not located on any important Roman main road , but the port at Weinplatz was important, where river trade goods were shipped in barges on the Alpine route over the Vicus Centum Prata to and from Lake Walen.

Manors in the vicinity of the settlement

A number of manors (villae rusticae) were grouped around the vicus, which is inhabited by about 250 to 350 people ; archaeologically proven in Albisrieden (Hochfeld / Galgenacker), Altstetten (Loogarten), Oerlikon ( Irchel ), Wipkingen (Waidstrasse) and Wollishofen (Gässli / Seestrasse).

Albisrieden

The Antiquarian Society in Zurich examined the remains of Roman buildings in the Letzigraben open-air swimming pool as early as 1838. The excavation of the city archeology in 2006 showed the manor house of the villa rustica with a floor plan of around 20 x 40 meters. In modern times, their stones were partially cleared; the remains of the wall were only 50 cm below the surface of the lawn.

Altstetten

In April and May 2010, the Zurich City Archeology examined the area with the high medieval cemetery and remains of Roman buildings on the church hill in Altstetten. Individual finds were made as early as the middle of the 19th century. Excavations in 1941 showed that the Altstetten church was built on the foundations of a Roman house. The remains of a wall and a mortar floor were found in the choir tower of the church. The clay slabs of a Roman hypocaust were used for the floor of the first church . Despite further individual finds, including fragments of the wall plastering, the extent, internal structure or furnishings of the Roman building cannot be documented in more detail due to the isolated excavation and the cemetery above.

Fort

The retaining wall of the Lindenhof, which goes back to the Roman fort

In late Roman times, the focus of the settlement shifted again to the easy-to-fortify Lindenhof. The topography exploiting, was probably in the early 4th century under Diocletian and Constantine I , a fort built, the customs station against during the migrations advancing from the north Alemanni should secure. The fortification, which is only 4500 square meters in size but very strong, was reinforced with ten towers and a two-meter-wide wall, which remained intact until the Middle Ages. Remnants of the wall from this structure came to light when the Zum Paradies property was demolished at the southern end of Lindenplatz.

Development after the withdrawal of the Roman troops

Sometime after 401 the fort was vacated by the western Roman troops; Roman building activities from the course of the fifth century have not yet been archaeologically recorded. There is no reliable information about the further fate of the Gallo-Roman population and the settlement. Turicum and the fort probably continued to exist on a modest scale, and the Gallo-Roman residents were settled by new strata of the population of Alemannic- Franconian origin. Based on the archaeological findings, destruction of the settlement structures in Zurich is ruled out, and the settlement is likely to have hardly changed until the early Middle Ages - streets, buildings and infrastructure were still used. Evidence for the continuity of the Gallo-Roman population and for an Alamannic immigration in the early Middle Ages is provided by the grave fields from this period found in Zurich. a. in Aussersihl (Bäckerstrasse), at the church of St. Peter (choir walls, church hill) and at the so-called court burial ground (Spiegelgasse / Obere Fences). These grave fields were apparently in the course of the 11./12. Century in favor of the cemeteries of St. Peter, the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster at the Münsterhof abandoned, what finds of coins, ceramics and bricks from the Roman settlement era as well as a pen from the 11th / 12th centuries. Century from the excavation campaign 2013/2014 of the city archeology.

literature

  • Regula Frei-Stolba , Reinhold Kaiser, Anita Siegfried and others: History of the Canton of Zurich. Volume 1: Early to Late Middle Ages . Werd-Verlag, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-85932-158-7 .
  • Margrit Balmer: Zurich in the late Latène and early imperial times. From the Celtic oppidum to the Roman vicus turicum. In: Monographs of Canton Archeology Zurich 39th Building Department / Office for Urban Development / Urban Archeology (Ed.), Fotorotar-Verlag, Zurich / Egg 2009, ISBN 978-3-905681-37-6 .

Web links

  • The Turicum project , website of the Building Department of the City of Zurich, Department of Archeology, Preservation of Monuments and the Archive of Building History

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Margarita Primas: Prehistory of the Lake Zurich Area at a Glance: From the Stone Age to the Early Iron Age. In: Helvetia Archaeologica. 12/1981.
  2. ↑ Ulrich Ruoff: The bank settlements at Zurich and Greifensee. In: Helvetia Archaeologica. 12/1981.
  3. ↑ Anita Siegfried: The Iron Age. In: History of the Canton of Zurich. Volume 1: Early to Late Middle Ages. Werd-Verlag, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-85932-158-7 .
  4. ↑ Dölf Wild u. a .: city ​​walls. A new image of the city fortifications of Zurich. Text for the exhibition in the Haus zum Rech, Zurich, February 6th to April 30th, 2004. In: City history and urban development in Zurich. Writings on archeology, monument preservation and urban planning. Volume 5. Werd-Verlag, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-905384-05-1 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e Regula Frei-Stolba, Reinhold Kaiser a. a .: The Roman period. In: History of the Canton of Zurich. Volume 1: Early to Late Middle Ages. Werd-Verlag, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-85932-158-7 .
  6. ↑ CIL 13,5244 .
  7. ↑ ortsnames.ch s. v. Zurich .
  8. ↑ Andres Kristol, Zurich = Tūrḗgum ou Tū́rĕgum? , in: Nouvelle revue d'onomastique 47-48 (2007), p. 223 ff.
  9. ↑ Lexicon of Swiss municipality names . Edited by the Center de Dialectologie at the University of Neuchâtel under the direction of Andres Kristol. Huber, Frauenfeld / Stuttgart / Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7193-1308-5 , and Éditions Payot, Lausanne 2005, ISBN 2-601-03336-3 , p. 992 f.
  10. ↑ Wulf Müller, TURICUM - Turegum - Zurich , in: Albrecht Greule / Stefan Hackl (eds.), The Southwest as reflected in the name. Commemorative letter for Lutz Reichardt , Stuttgart 2011, p. 185 ff.
  11. ↑ Wulf Müller, Turegum = Zurich , in: Nouvelle revue d'onomastique 47-48 (2007), p. 221 f.
  12. ^ Manfred Niemeyer (ed.): German book of place names. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, p. 719.
  13. ↑ Pierre-Yves Lambert, La langue Gauloise. Description linguistique, commentaire d'inscriptions choisies , Paris 1994, p. 46
  14. ↑ Dölf Wild: Zurich City under water - interaction between nature and people in Zurich's early days . In: City of Zurich, Office for Urban Development (Ed.): Archeology and Monument Preservation. Report 2006–2008 . gta Verlag, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-85676-238-4 , p. 21–23 ( online version , PDF; 507 KB [accessed March 20, 2013]).
  15. ↑ Simone Rau: Spectacular finds in the fire ruin . In: Tages-Anzeiger . February 12, 2009, accessed March 20, 2013.
  16. ^ City of Zurich, Department of Urban Development: Information sheet Thermengasse, the Roman baths of Turicum (PDF; 1.6 MB), accessed on March 20, 2013.
  17. ^ Reports of the Cantonal Archeology Zurich 18 (2006): Archeology in the Canton of Zurich, 18th Report, years 2003–2005 . Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-905681-22-6 .
  18. ^ Civil engineering department of the city of Zurich: Züri z'Fuess: Lindenhof terrace .
  19. ↑ Website of the Masonic Lodge Modestia cum Libertate ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 20, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.modestia-cum-libertate.ch
  20. ^ Website of the City of Zurich, Building Department: Turicum II: Ancient City Insights , accessed on March 20, 2013.
  21. ^ Office for Urban Development of the City of Zurich: excavation on the Kirchhügel Altstetten , (PDF; 1.98 MB), accessed on April 27, 2013.
  22. ↑ In the so-called Lindenhofkeller near the building of the Zurich Masonic Lodge Modestia cum Libertate , well-preserved building remains from Roman times, the Middle Ages and the early modern times can be viewed on display boards. The key to the Lindenhofkeller can be reserved by telephone at the building history archive of the city of Zurich (civil engineering office).
  23. ↑ Jürg Rohrer: The old city wall slumbers under the street. In: Tages-Anzeiger. July 26, 2013, accessed March 24, 2014 .

Coordinates: 47 ° 22 '  N , 8 ° 32'  E ; CH1903:  six hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred and thirty-six  /  247492