Zürich Hauptbahnhof, often shortened to Zürich HB or just HB, and known in English as Zurich Main Station, is the largest railway station in Switzerland and one of the busiest in Europe. Located at the northern end of Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, the station is a major railway hub, with services to and from across Switzerland and neighbouring countries such as Germany, Italy, Austria and France. The station was originally constructed as the terminus of the Spanisch Brötli Bahn, the first railway built completely within Switzerland. Serving up to 2,915 trains per day, Zürich HB is one of the busiest railway stations in the world. It was ranked as the best European railway station in 2023 and 2024.
Zürich HB is one of 29 stations in Zurich that are located within fare zone 110 of the Zürcher Verkehrsverbund (ZVV).. It is situated at the northern end of the Altstadt () and east of the Europaallee in central Zurich, near the confluence of the rivers Limmat and Sihl (the Sihl actually passes through the station in a tunnel with railway tracks both above and below). The station is on several levels, with platforms both at ground and below-ground level, tied together by underground passages and the ShopVille shopping mall. It is also connected with the subsurface station of SZU, but shares no tracks with the latter. Zürich HB's railway yards extend about to the west.
The station is included in the Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National Significance.
Location Zürich Hauptbahnhof is very centrally situated at the far northern end of Bahnhofstrasse, which is one of the city's main shopping streets and flanked by many hotels.
History The first station
The first Zurich railway station was built by , on what were then the north-western outskirts of the city. It occupied a piece of land between the rivers Limmat and Sihl, and trains accessed it from the west via a bridge over the Sihl. At the eastern end of the station was a turntable, used for turning locomotives. This basic terminal station layout, with all trains arriving from the west, was to set the basic design of the station for the next 143 years.
The new station was initially the terminus of the Swiss Northern Railway, more often called the Spanisch-Brötli-Bahn, which opened on 9 August 1847 and linked Zurich with Baden. Initially the railway lines in the station were laid to a gauge of , perhaps because the same gauge was used at the contemporaneous and nearby Grand Duchy of Baden State Railway.
From the opening of the station, the railways of northern Switzerland developed rapidly, and by 1853 the Swiss Northern Railway had been merged into the Swiss Northeastern Railway (Schweizerische Nordostbahn; NOB). Also in 1853, the tracks in the station were regauged to the standard gauge () that is still used by all lines in the station. In 1856, the NOB completed its line from the station to Winterthur via the Wipkingen Tunnel and Oerlikon. In 1858, the NOB completed its line from Baden via Brugg to Aarau, where it connected with the Swiss Central Railway (Schweizerische Centralbahn; SCB), thus providing connections to Basel, Solothurn and Lausanne.
With further railways planned, it became clear that the 1847 station was not large enough. A rebuild was started to meet Zurich's increased transport needs, albeit on the same site and using the same basic layout.
The 1871 station
In 1871, the replacement station building opened, to a design by architect Jakob Friedrich Wanner. Its main entrance is a triumphal arch facing the end of the then newly built Bahnhofstrasse. In front of the arch stands a monument to the railway pioneer Alfred Escher. The magnificent sandstone neo-Renaissance building features richly decorated lobbies and atriums, restaurants and halls. Originally housed inside it was the headquarters of the Schweizerische Nordostbahn (NOB). The train shed, spanned by iron trusses, initially covered six tracks.
The station was named Zürich Hauptbahnhof in 1893, to reflect that year's incorporation of many of Zurich's suburbs into an enlarged municipality. In 1902, the year in which the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) took over the Schweizerische Centralbahn and the NOB, the tracks inside the eastern end of the train shed were lifted, due to a lack of space. Since then, these tracks have terminated at a more central location, immediately to the north of the Bahnhofstrasse. Also in 1902, four more tracks and a north wing with a restaurant and railway mail service were added to the north of the train shed. In the vacant space left inside the train shed, new rooms were built for baggage handling.
On 18 February 1916, the SBB decided that electrification of its network would be by the high-tension single-phase alternating current system that is still used on all routes. On 5 February 1923, the electrified Zug–Zurich railway was put into operation, the first electrified line to Zurich. By 1927 all routes from Zürich Hauptbahnhof had been electrified.
In 1933, the station's simple concourse and the iron and glass train shed were created with seven and a half arches to cover 16 tracks. As part of that work, the main shed was shortened by two segments.
In the 1940s, the line between Zurich and Geneva served as a "parade route". The first lightweight steel express train had entered service on this route in 1937. By 11 June 1960, the SBB network was largely electrified. In the following year, the SBB introduced its first four-system electric trains under the Trans Europ Express banner, and thereby increased Zürich Hauptbahnhof's international importance.
In 1963, about 500 metres before the concourse, an imposing six-storey concrete cube arose in the station yard. It was designed by SBB architect , and it has been the home of the Zentralstellwerk Zürich (central signalling control) since 1966. The then state-of-the-art relay-controlled interlocking system replaced the decentralised mechanical and electro-mechanical signal boxes in the station throat, including the Stellwerk «Seufzerbrücke» ("Bridge of Sighs" signal box), which had spanned the entire station throat just east of the Langstrasse.
The signalling control system was modernised to coincide with the commissioning of the Zurich S-Bahn. It is equipped with a computerised controller that performs the standard operations. Apart from the tracks and points (switches) of the "Sihlpost station" (which are controlled by an electronic control system), the entire control of the points and signals in the Langstrasse–Concourse section is still largely under relay control, in some cases with the original relay sets installed in 1966.
The immense station yard, with its platform tracks and station building, is a bottleneck for the city of Zurich. The Limmat and the Sihl were further bottlenecks, and the combination of the three led to gridlock in the 1950s and 1960s. In parallel, there were plans for a subway system. Although the people voted against it in 1962, the city's Civil Engineering Department had already started to convert the Bahnhofplatz for the purpose of a possible underground line.
ShopVille and S-Bahn
On 1 October 1970, construction of the Bahnhofplatz, as well as the pedestrian and shopping arcade ShopVille was completed. Upon its opening, the Bahnhofplatz became a pedestrian-free zone, and the underground ShopVille the only access to the station. Contrary to expectations, ShopVille did not capture the support of the people, who, in 1973, voted even more emphatically to reject a subway system.
In the 1980s, ShopVille became a drug-dealing hub, due to its proximity to the (). Its low point was reached at the end of the decade, when travellers avoided all parts of it other than the concourse and the tram stop. Consequently, there were several night-time closures by mesh fences. However, the solution to this problem was foreseeable, as the people had agreed on 29 November 1981 to the construction of the Zurich S-Bahn and the extension of the Sihltal Zürich Uetliberg Bahn to the Hauptbahnhof.
The long Hirschengraben Tunnel was built for the S-Bahn from the Hauptbahnhof to Zurich Stadelhofen. This new line continued through the Zürichberg Tunnel to Stettbach, with connections to the existing lines to Dietlikon and Dübendorf. In the Hauptbahnhof, two underground stations were constructed. For the S-Bahn, a four-track station with the working title Museumstrasse was built, and the Sihltal Zürich Uetliberg Bahn was extended to the station, which had once been intended for the never-realized U-Bahn.
The opening of the S-Bahn was on 27 May 1990, and since then, the ShopVille arcades have connected the two underground stations with the main hall. Black and white striped marble walls and granite floors are the main design features of what is one of the largest shopping centres in Switzerland. In 1996, the main hall was cleared of its temporary installations. In 1997, the train shed was fitted on both sides with pitched roofs on sloping concrete supports, designed by local architects Marcel Meili and Markus Peter.
Löwenstrasse station
The planning of the S-Bahn and the Rail 2000 long-haul project raised the idea of building the Weinberg Tunnel, a through route from Zürich Hauptbahnhof to Oerlikon. That proposal was initially postponed, but the great success of the S-Bahn led to an expansion of services and, consequently, to capacity constraints. Plans were made to expand existing rail lines within Zurich leading to the north, but this encountered resistance from the population living near those rail lines. As an alternative the construction of the Weinberg tunnel and four additional underground tracks in the railway station was suggested and confirmed by a referendum.
In 2002, an architectural competition was held for the new Löwenstrasse transit station, won by the architect . On 22 December 2006, the Federal Office of Transport approved the building of the tunnel and a third underground four-track Löwenstrasse station. In September 2007, construction began on the project, nicknamed Durchmesserlinie (cross-city link). On 14 June 2014, the new platforms and tunnels were opened.
The new line runs from the Altstetten railway station, crosses the Zürich HB station throat on a bridge, and leads into the underground Löwenstrasse station. From there, it goes through the new, approximately long Weinberg Tunnel in a long left-hand curve under the existing Zürich HB–Stadelhofen line. It then ends at the level of the portals of the existing Wipkinger Tunnels in Oerlikon, where it connects with the northbound lines, including the line to Zurich Airport and Winterthur.
In 2007, the SBB and Deutsche Bahn entered into a station partnership between the Zürich HB and the Berlin Hauptbahnhof to promote knowledge sharing between operators of similarly sized stations.
As of the mid-2020s, Zürich Hauptbahnhof was the busiest railway station in Switzerland. For five consecutive years to 2025, the Consumer Choice Center ranked it as Europe's best performing rail hub.
Layout and facilities
Layout The station is aligned approximately east to west, at the northern edge of the city centre and the northern end of Bahnhofstrasse, the city's main shopping street, and Bahnhofplatz. North of the station are the Platzspitz park, the Swiss National Museum () and a terminal for intercity buses. East of the station is the river Limmat with two bridges, the and the Bahnhofbrücke.
The station is split over three principal levels, with the ground level housing sixteen terminal platform tracks, flanked by the and Postbrücke, and the station's main concourse. Below this level are a series of pedestrian passageways, the ShopVille shopping centre, and the course of the Sihl river. At the lowest level, and parallel to the terminal platforms at ground level, are ten underground platform tracks, of which two are terminal () and eight are through ().