Altstadt (Stadt Zürich)

Altstadt in the Swiss city of Zürich encompasses the area of the entire historical city before 1893, before the incorporation of what are now districts 2 to 12 into the municipality, over the period 1893 to 1934. Altstadt approximately corresponds to the area enclosed by the former city ramparts, and is today within the administrative area of the city called Kreis 1 .With a population of 5,617, it houses about 1.4% of the city's total population.Administratively, District 1 is divided into four parts or quarters by the Zürich statistical office, Rathaus, Hochschulen, Lindenhof and City. Lindenhof and Rathaus correspond to the parts of the medieval city left and right of the Limmat, respectively, while City and Hochschulen include the area of the Early Modern city west and east of the medieval walls, respectively.LindenhofThe Lindenhof quarter corresponds to the mindere Stadt, the smaller but more prestigious half of the medieval town left of the river. This is the oldest core of the city, with settlement traces dating to pre-Roman times, and fortified as the Roman Vicus Turicum, a Roman customs station with a surrounding civilian settlement, in the final decades of the 1st century BC.The Lindenhof hill itself is the site of the Roman castle at the location of the Celtic Oppidum Zürich-Lindenhof, rebuilt in Carolingian times but derelict by the 13th century, when it was used as a source for building stone for the first stone houses of rich burghers of the recently reichsfrei city. The Schipfe quarter at the Limmat below the Lindenhof is the site of the Roman vicus, with traces of a hypocaustum nearby the Münsterhof excavated. St. Peter church was the parish church of the medieval city, built on the site of an earlier temple to Jupiter.