[9] During the Middle Ages, Zurich gained the independent and privileged status of imperial immediacy and, in 1519, became a primary centre of the Protestant Reformation in Europe under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli.

[16] The Latin stress on the long vowel of the Gaulish name, [tʊˈriːkõː], was lost in German [ˈtsyːrɪç] but is preserved in Italian [dzuˈriːɡo] and in Romansh [tuˈritɕ].

Traces of pre-Roman Celtic La Tène settlements were discovered near the Lindenhof, a morainic hill dominating the SE – NW waterway constituted by Lake Zurich and the river Limmat.

The earliest written record of the town dates from the 2nd century, with a tombstone referring to it as the Statio Turicensis Quadragesima Galliarum ("Zurich post for collecting the 2.5% value tax of the Galliae"), discovered at the Lindenhof.

In 1045, King Henry III granted the convent the right to hold markets, collect tolls, and mint coins, and thus effectively made the abbess the ruler of the city.

The political power of the convent slowly waned in the 14th century, beginning with the establishment of the Zunftordnung (guild laws) in 1336 by Rudolf Brun, who also became the first independent mayor, i.e. not nominated by the abbess.

[25] With the rise of the Black Death in 1349, Zurich, like most other Swiss cities, responded by persecuting and burning the local Jews, marking the end of the first Jewish community there.

[26] A woman who died in about 200 BC was found buried in a carved tree trunk during a construction project at the Kern school complex in March 2017 in Aussersihl.

A sheepskin coat, a belt chain, a fancy wool dress, a scarf, and a pendant made of glass and amber beads were also discovered with the woman.

[27][28][29][30] On 1 May 1351, the citizens of Zurich had to swear allegiance before representatives of the cantons of Lucerne, Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, the other members of the Swiss Confederacy.

[33] The coat of arms of Zurich, used by both the city and the canton, consists of a divided field featuring white (argent) and blue (azure).

The geographic (and historic) centre of the city is the Lindenhof, a small natural hill on the west bank of the Limmat, about 700 m (2,300 ft) north of where the river issues from Lake Zurich.

[citation needed] On its west side, the Limmat valley is flanked by the wooded heights of the Albis chain, which runs along the western border.

[citation needed] The northernmost part of the municipality extends to the plain of the Glatt valley and to the saddle which makes the connection between the Glattal and Furttal.

[57] In November 2008[58] the people of Zurich voted in a public referendum to write into law the quantifiable and fixed deadline of one tonne of CO2 per person per annum by 2050.

The sunny and desirable residential areas in the hills overlooking Zurich, Waidberg and Zürichberg, and the bottom part of the slope on the western side of the valley on the Uetliberg, are also densely built.

In addition, the public transport network includes funicular railways and even the Luftseilbahn Adliswil-Felsenegg (LAF), a cable car between Adliswil and Felsenegg.

[65] The critique aims at badly governed traffic management at construction sites, missing possibilities to park bikes in the city as well as rather diffident ambitions.

[8] The entire metropolitan area (including the cities of Winterthur, Baden, Brugg, Schaffhausen, Frauenfeld, Uster / Wetzikon, Rapperswil-Jona, and Zug) had a population of around 1.82 million people.

However, because of Zurich's national importance, and therefore its existing high fluctuation,[clarification needed] its inhabitants and commuters speak all kinds of Swiss German dialects.

In 1922 Augusto Giacometti won the competition to paint the entrance hall of Amtshaus I, which the city promised to brighten up this gloomy room, which was once used as a cellar, and at the same time to alleviate the precarious economic situation of the local artists.

Giacometti brought in the painters Jakob Gubler, Giuseppe Scartezzini and Franz Riklin for the execution of this fresco, which encompasses the ceiling and walls, thereby creating a unique colour space that appears almost sacred in its luminosity.

As a result, the city is home to many multilingual people and employees generally demonstrate a high degree of motivation and a low level of absenteeism.

Nowadays with its 24,000 students and 1,900 graduations each year, the University of Zurich is the largest in Switzerland and offers the widest range of subjects and courses at any Swiss higher education institution.

The headquarters of Switzerland's national licence fee-funded German language television network ("SF") are located in the Leutschenbach neighborhood, to the north of the Oerlikon railway station.

There are three large daily newspapers published in Zurich that are known across Switzerland: the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Tages-Anzeiger and Blick, the largest Swiss tabloid.

Artists like Max Bill, Marcel Breuer, Camille Graeser or Richard Paul Lohse had their ateliers in Zurich, which became even more important after the takeover of power by the Nazi regime in Germany and World War II.

The Schauspielhaus was home to emigrants such as Bertolt Brecht or Thomas Mann, and saw premieres of works of Max Frisch, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Botho Strauss or Elfriede Jelinek.

There are authentic amusements: bars, punk clubs, hip hop stages, Caribbean restaurants, arthouse cinemas, Turkish kebabs and Italian espresso-bars, but also sex shops or the famous red-light district of Zurich.

The Zurich Lions Lacrosse Academics, who play their home games at the Hochschulsportanlage Fluntern,[citation needed] have been the country's dominant team and a major competitor at international events.