The Lindens of Lindenhof

Zurich's history is often said to begin on this hilltop, a Roman customs post and later a Carolingian imperial palace, and lindens have been planted here continuously since at least 1474, when a chronicle records 52 trees going into the ground at once. None of those original trees survive; a severe storm in 1861 destroyed much of the historic stand, and an attempt to replace the lindens with other species was rejected by Zurich's own residents so firmly that the substitutes were dug up and replaced with lindens again within 15 years. Most of what grows on Lindenhof today dates from that 1860s-1870s replanting, making the oldest individual trees a little over 150 years old rather than the 500-plus years the site's own name and reputation imply. One tree breaks that pattern in a different direction: in 1971, the year Swiss women finally won the right to vote at the federal level, a new linden was planted here specifically to mark it. Lindenhof's real age is the age of the tradition of replanting it, not any single trunk standing today, a distinction this project tries to get right rather than smooth over for a better headline.