Turicum
TURICUM [HELVETII Vol. 1. p. 1041.]
Vicus and fort at the W end of Lake Zurich and on the Limmat river (CIL XIII, 5244 = Howald-Meyer no. 260). It was a harbor and depot on an old route from Raetia to the Rhine via the Walensee and Zurichsee, and there was therefore a small fort during the Augnstan campaigns ca. 25-15 B.C. During the 1st c. A.D. its toll station, a statio Trigesimae Galliarum, was guarded by detachments of the legions garrisoned in Vindonissa. A fortress was built, under Valentinian I, and abandoned probably in A.D. 401. The settlement lies below the mediaeval city, but the fort has been excavated.
All the military installations occupied Lindenhof hill, above the Limmat, and the vicus was located near the bridge. Despite the characteristic location on a spur no trace of a pre-Roman oppidum has been found. The late Roman fort was of irregular shape (E wall toward the river 48 m; N 96; W 60; S 80; area 4500 sq. m). The ten towers protruded considerably inside the walls (av. width 7-8 m). Most of them were pentagonal on the outside, and built on square foundations, but the N and S gate towers, through which the road passed (modern Lindenhofstrasse-Pfalzgasse), were square. Some material in the fortress was reused. A ditch lay outside on the N (Fortunagass), and some traces of buildings have been found inside the fort. No late Roman houses are known outside it. Pants of the fortress are visible in modern buildings. Finds are in the Schweizenisches Landesmuseum.
(See also Limes, Rhine.)
BIBLIOGRAPHYE. Vogt, Der Lindenhof in Zürich (1948); V. von Gonzenbach, BonnJbb 163 (1963) 103-5; E. Meyer, “Zürich in römischer Zeit,” in Vogt et al., Zurich von der Urzeit bis zum Mittelalter (1971) 107-62MPI; C. M. Wells, The German Policy of Augustus (1972) 53-54.
V. VON GONZENBACH