Zug Castle

The canton of Zug is the smallest in Switzerland by population, but it is also one of the wealthiest jurisdictions anywhere in the world, a consequence of its flat-rate tax policies and the corporate residency decisions of several hundred multinational companies. Its capital, the town of Zug, sits on the shore of the Zugersee with the Alps rising behind it, and its old town contains a medieval castle tower that leans 1.6 metres from the vertical. The tower is visible proof that medieval builders were not infallible, and it gives the castle, and the town, an engaging personality. Burg Zug is not among the great castles of Switzerland, but it is the right castle for understanding this particular corner of the Confederation, and the leaning tower is better than it sounds.

The castle at Zug was first established around 1200 as the administrative and military centre of the town, which grew up under Habsburg protection during the 13th century. The Habsburgs, the same dynasty that would eventually rule Austria, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, originated not far from here, in Aargau, and the early history of Zug is largely a story of Habsburg administration and the town's gradual evolution from subject territory to independent confederate member. Zug joined the Swiss Confederation in 1352, becoming the fifth of the eight original cantons, a status that still shapes its civic identity today.

The most distinctive feature of the castle complex is the Zytturm, a 14th-century clocktower that has subsided so that it now leans 1.6 metres from vertical, visible to anyone standing in the old town and looking directly at it. The lean has been stable for several centuries, having been measured and monitored since the 16th century — a reassuring detail for anyone standing beneath it. The Zytturm is the emblem of the city of Zug and appears on the municipal coat of arms. Its tile-roofed cap, added in the 18th century, was designed to accommodate the lean rather than correct it, a pragmatic solution that has left the tower's tilt as a permanent and oddly endearing civic feature rather than a structural embarrassment.

The castle now houses the Museum Burg Zug, a local and regional history museum covering the development of the town and canton from the medieval period through the 20th century. The collection includes objects relating to the Battle of Arbedo in 1422, a significant defeat for the Swiss Confederates that tempered some of the era's military overconfidence, alongside material on the Zug cantonal government's history, traditional crafts and occupations, and medieval weaponry. The museum is compact and well organised, and it rewards visitors who want to understand Swiss political history at the cantonal level, which is where Swiss democracy actually functions day to day, rather than at the more abstract federal level more familiar to outside visitors.

The castle is integrated into one of the best-preserved small medieval old towns in central Switzerland, a compact area of burgher houses, the Church of St. Oswald, a remarkable late-Gothic church begun in 1478, the Rathaus, and a lakefront promenade. The Zugersee stretches south toward the Alps, with the Rigi and Pilatus massifs visible on clear days. The old town has an unusual coherence: unlike many Swiss towns that rebuilt extensively during the 19th century, Zug's old town avoided heavy redevelopment, and the scale of the medieval street plan remains essentially intact.

It is worth noting, without overstating the irony, that the canton of Zug has the lowest cantonal tax rates in Switzerland and has attracted the registered offices of hundreds of international companies, creating a local economy of extraordinary prosperity wrapped around a medieval core. The contrast, a leaning medieval tower, a 14th-century church, and the global headquarters of commodity trading companies registered to the same postcode, is one of the more unusual juxtapositions in European heritage tourism, and walking from the castle to the lakefront makes that contrast almost impossible to miss.