Greifensee Castle

The castle stands atop a block of soft molasse rock about three metres above the surrounding ground, a position that originally brought it right to the lake shore. The main residential building measures roughly fifteen by twenty‑one metres and keeps the broad ground plan of the 1200s. The older defensive layout included a surrounding stone wall and a roughly four‑metre‑wide moat on the landward side, while an outer courtyard and the town’s fortifications once protected the settlement; the outer courtyard and town wall were partly demolished in 1444 and did not return after the early 1500s rebuilding.

Heavy foundation masonry up to four and a half metres thick remains at the base of the walls. The earliest work appears as coarse boulder construction using erratic stones, while the 1520 repairs were executed in smoother, rendered masonry that contrasts with the medieval blockwork. An eight‑metre‑deep sod well survives inside the ground floor cellar and a skeletal burial of a young man, dated to the 1444 siege, was found in the lakeside cellar, linking the building directly to the violent events of that summer.

Roof form and some elevations changed over time. The medieval house likely had an overhanging timber upper floor beneath a hipped roof, but the 1520 rebuild replaced that with a gabled roof featuring stepped gables. A neo‑Gothic porch added in 1862 was later taken down during mid‑20th century exterior restoration, which also renewed the moat, reinstated roof eaves and reconstructed a tall pointed‑arch entrance. Decorative exterior features restored then include a standing coat of arms that preserves a 1535/1536 Zurich imperial emblem and a sundial.

Two chapels survive in and beside the castle. A lakeside chapel dedicated to Saint Gallus, donated in the 1300s, remains built into what was once the town wall and still shows its medieval fabric. Inside the castle a small chapel dedicated to Saint Catherine retains a Gothic tunnel‑shaped window and interior paintings that date to the early 1600s. About ten metres from the main block the Romanesque Landenberg House, a secular building, and an adjoining vicarage preserve cores that may go back to the town’s founding and were part of the lakeside defensive line damaged in 1444.

Alterations from the 19th and early 20th centuries are visible inside and around the castle. A small prison cell was constructed at the lakeside ground floor in the Napoleonic era. Later, when the moat was dry, a washhouse sat within it and a wooden bridge provided access; a bridge was reinstated during 1948–1953 conservation work. Each floor of the main building has a central corridor about five metres wide with rooms arranged on either side. A large two‑flue stove chimney runs up the west corridor wall through the upper three floors. Many upper rooms and the stairwell display Classicist fittings from about 1815.

Interior fittings record a long sequence of occupants. On the ground floor a painted line of bailiffs’ coats of arms decorates the southwest wall. The first floor contains the Landvogt’s main room with a heavy window column from the 1520 rebuild, late‑Gothic wood panelling, a beam ceiling and a stove installed in 1917; a partly original kitchen opens into a pantry formed by a tunnel within a roughly four‑metre‑thick wall. The second floor houses an 1818 stove by H. Michel, a treasurer’s room with an alcove dated 1818 and the St. Catherine chapel with its Gothic window and early 17th‑century paintings. On the third floor stands a 1776 stove by Heinrich Bleuler decorated with castle views and rococo landscapes, and a rear hall bears historicist murals from 1917.