Paracelsus knew the “Storchen”, Grimmelshausen lived here, and Richard Wagner was a guest: For more than 660 years, the hotel has welcomed visitors to Weinplatz square in Zurich. We no longer know how the hotel got its name, but it may well have been from the storks that frequently built their nests here. The “Hus zum Storchen” was mentioned in the tax books of the city of Zurich for the first time in 1357, and was listed as a guesthouse some 100 years later. It attracted notable personalities from the start – envoys of the Swedish king Gustav Adolf, gentlemen from the Federal Diet of Switzerland, princes, Gottfried Keller and many other luminaries stayed at the Storchen. The well-known author John Irving eternalised the Storchen in his novels “A Son of the Circus” and “A Widow for One Year”. In the 20th century, the hotel was renovated and transformed into what it is today.