Description : Zug (French: Zoug; Italian: Zugo; Romansh: Zug; New Latin: Tugium) is the largest town and capital of the Swiss canton of Zug in Switzerland. Its name originates from the fishing vocabulary; in the Middle Ages it referred to the right to pull up fishing nets and hence to the right to fish. The oldest evidence of humans in the area trace back to 14,000 BC. There have been Paleolithic finds on the north bank of Lake Zug, which come from nomadic hunters and gatherers. Archaeologists have also found over forty lake-shore settlements, known as pile dwellings, on the shores of Lake Zug from the epoch of the first settled farmers in the Neolithic period (5,500-2,200 BC). The peak in these lake-shore village settlements was between 3800 and 2450 BC. For the same epoch, the first pre-alpine land use has been found in Menzingen and in the Ägeri valley. The well-known, historically-researched lake-shore village 'Sumpf' (the swamp), dated from the late Bronze Age (up until 850 BC). Evidence from these finds resulted in a quite different picture of life in former times, which is on display at the Zug Museum for Prehistory. In addition, finds from the Iron Age (850-50 BC) and the Roman and Celtic-Roman time (from 50 BC) have been unearthed. Kyburg foundation In around AD 600, Alemannic families and tribes immigrated to the area of present-day canton Zug. The name Blickensdorf, and place names with ‘- ikon’ endings, prove this as the first Alemannic living space. The churches of Baar and Risch also date back to the early Middle Ages. The first written document on the area originates from the year 858, and refers to King Ludwig the German giving the farm Chama (Cham) to the Zürich Fraumünster convent. At this time, the area of present-day Zug belonged to completely different monastic and secular landlords, the most important of whom were the Habsburgs, and who, in 1264, inherited the Kyburg rights and remained a central political power until about 1400. In the course of the high medieval town construction, the settlement of Zug also received a town wall at some point after 1200. The town founders were probably the counts of Kyburg. The town, first mentioned in AD 1240, was called an "oppidum" in 1242 and a "castrum" in 1255. In 1273, it was bought by Rudolph of Habsburg from Anna, the heiress of Kyburg and wife of Eberhard, head of the cadet line of Habsburg. Through this purchase it passed into the control of the Habsburgs and was placed under a Habsburg bailiff. The Aeusser Amt or Outer District consisted of the villages and towns surrounding Zug, which each had their own Landsgemeinden but were ruled by a single Habsburg bailiff. Zug was important as an administrative center of the Kyburg and the Habsburg district, then as a local market place, and, thereafter, as a stage town for the transport of goods (particularly salt and iron) over the Hirzel hill towards Lucerne.
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