Flag of Zurich

The flag of Zurich divides the field on the diagonal, blue at the top and by the flagpole and white below. It is documented in 1220: together with Schaffhausen, it is the oldest cantonal flag still in use, and one of the oldest still-valid flags in Europe.

How it came about

The city of Zurich gained imperial freedom in 1218, sharing with Schaffhausen the position of oldest state of the Empire that would later form Switzerland, and with it the right to have a standard of its own: it is first mentioned the following year and the seal of the town council, with the same drawing, dates from 1225. Being free meant defending itself alone, and the city’s flag flew in battle at the head of the Confederation, which Zurich joined in 1351. For centuries, moreover, the main flag carried an ornament that is no longer seen: a schwenkel, a very long streamer fastened at the top of the staff.

How it has changed

The field has not changed; what was lost is the schwenkel, added in 1273 according to the most accepted date, flown for centuries alongside the flag and now absent from it. The diagonal cut is the same as in the thirteenth century.

What it means

• Blue

  it has been said to be the lake, with the white of the snowy mountains; in the older tradition, rather the sky, and the white the water.

• The diagonal

  it has been explained as a sign of justice, though without medieval documentation saying so.

Fun facts

1. A streamer of honour or of shame

   The medieval world disagreed about the red schwenkel: some held it a great honour, others a mark of infamy, a sign of having lost a flag in battle. In 1477 the Duke of Lorraine took them away from the Swiss, believing he was washing their shame; they put them back on reaching home, offended.

2. The SPQR of Zurich

   On the eighteenth-century cavalry standards the city had S.PQ.T. engraved: Senatus Populusque Turicensis, the senate and people of Zurich, imitating the Roman SPQR.

3. An old flag instead of a new one

   Zurich received the standard gifted by the pope in 1512, but when the Reformation came it retired it and went back into combat with a hundred-year-old flag that had been kept since the Burgundian wars.

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