When 60 people died, and 26 houses were destroyed, in 1435

By the Fishery Museum at number 14 Unter Altstadt in the Old Town there is a plaque commemorating the 60 people who died and 26 houses which were lost as the lake burst its banks near there back in 1435, and indeed on Friday 4 March, 83 years after the canton joined the Confederation and in the year when Eric of Pomerania regained the throne of Sweden, and when Henry VI was king of England.

As many as 50 people had this plaque and its significance pointed out to them as they went on a highly detailed guided tour of the city, despite the threat of rain.

The group actually met up last Sunday, the day following International Museum Day, significantly by the Seesicht (Lake View) sculpture designed by Roman Signer to enable people to see below the surface of the lake, the lake itself featuring more than once on this detailed tour, led by four experts, namely Friederike Balke from the Kunsthaus Zug art gallery, Regula Hauser of the Burg Zug Museum, Dorothea Hintermann of the Museum of Pre-History and Judith Matter of the Tile Museum.

More widely known than the afore-mentioned disaster in 1435 is what is known as the Catastrophe of Zug in the summer of 1887. It was at the beginning of July of that year that cracks started to appear in a number of buildings in the quay area, not far from where the Cantonal Parliament building now stands. Then on the afternoon of the 5th July, the quay wall was destroyed by the sudden  movement of waves, possibly caused by an underwater landslide (the map shows the extent of it), leading to the deaths of 11 people, the destruction of 26 houses and nine other buildings, leaving 650 people homeless. Naturally those who survived were anxious to know what caused the phenomenon, as others were quick to apportion blame.

The tour continued to the Old Town, to Unter Altstadt, as mentioned, where the group was duly informed about the aforementioned disaster of 1435, though only after a an old saga about a mermaid and young fisherman had been told, though no details were given about this in this article by Haymo Empl. As Hauser went on the explain, subsequent construction in this area of Zug, to the south of Rigistrasse, showed that the land there is made up of unstable sea limestone.