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Hidden gem3rd – 5th c. ADFree

Irgenhausen Roman fort

Kastell Irgenhausen, Kleinkastell Irgenhausen, Römerkastell Irgenhausen

fort · Pfäffikon District, Zurich, Switzerland

What it is
Irgenhausen is a small late Roman fort on a low hill near the shore of the Pfäffikersee, in the canton of Zurich, whose square of walls and towers still stands; de.wikipedia counts it among the best-preserved forts in Switzerland, and it is open to walk round.
What you’ll see
The fort is a square about 60 m across, with four corner towers and three more towers along the sides; stone remains inside were probably a bath (en.wikipedia).
Worth the trip?
Yes, if you are anywhere near Zurich: it is a complete small fort that you can read at a glance, it costs nothing, and it sits in open country near the lake.
Getting there & cost
The fort is at Irgenhausen, part of Pfäffikon in the canton of Zurich. A free car park is mapped about 260 m away; no bus stop or station is mapped within 300 m (OpenStreetMap).Free · No charge is published or mappedHours, tickets and parking
A snow-covered field rising to a low hilltop crowned by a line of stone walls and towers, with bare trees beside them under a cloudy sky.
The fort on its hilltop above the fields. · Photo: Abderitestatos · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A tall square corner tower of rough stone and a long curtain wall running along the top of a grassy slope, lit by low evening sun.
A corner tower and the curtain wall. · Photo: Roland zh · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

What is there today

The fort is a square about 60 m across, with four corner towers and three more towers along the sides; stone remains inside were probably a bath (en.wikipedia). The walls stand to a good height, and part of what you see was restored and completed at the end of the 19th century (de.wikipedia). Under the southern corner tower the excavators found the hypocaust of a farming estate of the 1st to 3rd centuries, older than the fort (de.wikipedia).

Is it worth the trip?

Yes, if you are anywhere near Zurich: it is a complete small fort that you can read at a glance, it costs nothing, and it sits in open country near the lake. It is not large, and there is no museum or ticket office, so it is a stop rather than an outing in itself.

Getting there

The fort is at Irgenhausen, part of Pfäffikon in the canton of Zurich. A free car park is mapped about 260 m away; no bus stop or station is mapped within 300 m (OpenStreetMap). The ruins are tagged as open to the public, and no operator publishes hours or a charge.

Visiting details

Opening hours
Open-air ruins; OpenStreetMap tags the fort access=yes, and no operator publishes hours.
Tickets
No charge is published or mapped.
Parking
A free car park about 260 m away (OpenStreetMap, way/127921892).

Before you go

  • No public-transport stop is mapped within 300 m (OpenStreetMap).

History

The fort guarded a road and belonged to the rear line of the Danube–Iller–Rhine frontier, the defences Rome built along those rivers in the last phase of its rule (de.wikipedia); fr.wikipedia says it housed auxiliary troops. It was built in the 4th century and probably given up as early as the beginning of the 5th (de.wikipedia). Much later its north wall was quarried for stone to build a factory, until the Antiquarian Society in Zurich bought the site and stopped the stone robbing; the society excavated it at the end of the 19th century (de.wikipedia).

Nearby

  • Low stone foundation walls laid out on a lawn, with a single column standing at one corner and three information panels on posts, among houses.

    Photo: Roland zh · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons

    13 km · city · See-Gaster District, St. Gallen

    Centum Prata

    The forum, the marketplace with its town hall, is on the Meienbergstrasse (Kantonsarchäologie St. Gallen).

  • The low stone walls of a small room around a floor of grey mortar, crossed by an X of narrow channels edged with stones and brick, with grass and loose stone blocks beyond.

    Photo: Roland zh · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons

    24 km · villa · Bülach District, Zurich

    Roman estate of Seeb

    The ruins were excavated between 1958 and 1969 and partly conserved (the welcome board; it.wikipedia has systematic excavation from 1963 to 1970).

  • Low walls of rubble stone forming small rooms under an open timber roof, with rows of short square brick pillars standing in one room and tile slabs laid over pillars in another.

    Photo: Adrian Michael · CC BY 3.0 · Commons

    40 km · villa · Bremgarten District, Aargau

    Roman villa of Sarmenstorf

    Only the bath wing is still visible: after the excavations every other wall was covered over again, and the baths are protected by a shelter (Municipality of Sarmenstorf).

Straight-line distances.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.

SourceLicence
Pleiades 187422CC BY
Wikidata Q241013CC0
Vici.org 13051CC BY-SA (text), CC0 (metadata)
OpenStreetMap relation/3876182ODbL
Wikipedia (de) — Kleinkastell IrgenhausenCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Irgenhausen CastrumCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (fr) — Irgenhausen (fort romain)CC BY-SA 4.0
KGS inventory 7599 — Irgenhausen, römischer Gutshof / spätrömisches Kastell (BABS)licence not recorded