A name left by a market
"Vegetable bridge" has been its nickname since the fourteenth century.
Andrew Bossi — CC BY-SA 2.5 · Roland zh — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de — CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de — CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Not as a destination in itself while the works are on. You will cross it or pass beside it anyway between the town hall, the Grossmünster and Bahnhofstrasse, so give it a couple of minutes and take in the story as you go. The photograph you want of the river and the towers is at the **Münsterbrücke** two minutes away, or from the Limmatquai bank. Come back once the new bridge is finished, towards the end of the decade.
Because the market really was held on it from the fourteenth century, and the nickname outlived it. The weekly flower and vegetable market still runs in the old town, but the bridge works have pushed it temporarily to a nearby spot on the riverbank at the Stadthausquai, roughly on Saturday mornings — confirm the time and place before setting out, since the arrangement is provisional and shifts with the construction phases.
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A short, unusually wide bridge over the Limmat between Zurich's town hall and the Weinplatz on the opposite bank — so wide, relative to its length, that it reads as a square rather than a crossing. From the fourteenth century it carried the **vegetable market**, which is why the Zurichers call it the *Gmüesbrugg*, the vegetable bridge, a name still used in everyday speech although its official title since 1893 has been the Rathausbrücke. Its value is historical rather than visual: for centuries it was the **only crossing** of the Limmat inside the city, so everyone entering or leaving Zurich passed over it until the other bridges went up in the nineteenth century. In the Middle Ages it carried mills, stalls and the official occasions of the city and its guilds. What people have known in recent decades, though, is a concrete deck from 1973 with nothing of that past about it. ⚠ And here is the warning that matters: the city is demolishing the 1970s bridge for a slimmer replacement with fewer piers in the river. Work began in early **2026** and is due to run to 2029, so the site today is a construction zone rather than a sight. Pedestrians still cross on a temporary bridge on the south side, in service since June 2026, and the flower and vegetable market has moved nearby on the riverbank. For the classic view of the Limmat and the church towers, use the neighbouring **Münsterbrücke** instead.
"Vegetable bridge" has been its nickname since the fourteenth century.
Nearly as wide as it is long — rare among city bridges.
Rathausbrücke, 8001 Zürich