Schloss Sihlberg

Albert Heinrich Hürlimann-Hirzel built this villa in 1898 for his 8-person family, on the hill above the brewery he ran. The venue's own history page says so plainly: he had it built "gleich neben der Brauerei," right next to the brewery, "so wie es sich für einen Besitzer eines Industriebetriebes ziemte," as befitted the owner of an industrial concern. Nothing there claims the house was ever part of the plant. That claim shows up one page over, on schlosssihlberg.ch's own homepage, which places a couple "in den historischen Schlossmauern der Hürlimann Bierbrauerei," in the historic castle walls of the Hürlimann brewery, language that reads as though the wedding happens inside a converted brewhouse. The German Wikipedia entry for the building settles the geography more precisely than either of the site's own 2 versions of itself: Albert Heinrich Hürlimann, called the brewery's second patron, had a villa built in 1897 and 1898 "auf dem direkt an das Fabrikgelände angrenzenden Sihlberg," on the Sihlberg hill directly bordering the factory grounds. Bordering a brewery and standing inside one are different claims. This building only ever supported the first, and the site's own history page already said as much before its own homepage overstated it.

An architect trained under Semper, a garden by Mertens, 6 children in stone

The brewery long predates the villa. Per Wikipedia's account of Zurich's brewing history, Hans Heinrich Hürlimann founded it in Feldbach in 1836; the family moved production to the then-independent municipality of Enge, just outside Zurich's old gates, in 1866, and had it running there by 1867. By 1880 it was the largest brewery in Switzerland. Not until 1897 and 1898, decades after that move, did Albert Heinrich Hürlimann-Hirzel build himself a house on the hill above it. He hired August Heinrich Müller, an architect from Schaffhausen who had trained under Gottfried Semper, and brought in the landscape architect Evariste Mertens for the grounds. Retaining walls followed in 1911, by the architects Gull and Geiger; a veranda in 1922, by the architect F. Erismann. The result, 1750 square meters of living space on a 4000 square meter plot, mixes French early-Renaissance forms with late-Gothic detail, according to the building's own architectural record, dense enough with carved ornament that sandstone heads of all 6 of Albert Heinrich Hürlimann's children sit under the windows of the old nursery and sewing room. None of that appears on schlosssihlberg.ch. The wedding page's entire architectural pitch is one sentence about the rooms' own "Ausstrahlungskraft," their radiance. The children carved into the facade don't get a mention anywhere on the domain that now sells their old home for parties.

A widow, an empty house, a school, then one Hürlimann alone until Christmas night 2000

Hürlimann-Hirzel never explained, even to his own family, why he built something this eccentric, "spleenig" in the site's own word, for one household. His descendants apparently didn't think much of it either. He died in the 1930s; his widow kept living in the tower wing until after the Second World War and died in 1950, after which the house stood empty for years, its formal rooms unused. Zurich's Rudolf Steiner School occupied part of the building for a stretch afterward: the venue's own site gives 1976 to 1984, Wikipedia's account gives 1977 to 1980 and specifies it was only "ein Teil," a part, of the school rather than the whole institution. Neither page cites the other, and this write-up can't settle which span is correct, only that both agree a school, not a family, held the building by then. After the school left, Martin Hürlimann, whom the venue's own history calls the dynasty's last brewer, moved back in and stayed until he died there on Christmas night in 2000.

4 years unsold, then an architect who wanted the wreck

Hürlimann's 4 children inherited a house none of them particularly wanted and commissioned the firm KM&P to sell what the site's own prose still calls the legendary "Hürlimann Schlössli." It sat on the market for over 4 years. People toured it; nobody bought it. The site's own explanation is blunt: a house like this costs real money to keep, the private park Hürlimann-Hirzel had planted 100 years earlier had thinned as pieces of it were sold off, and, in the venue's own words, "in direkter Nachbarschaft steht heute eine hässliche Siedlung aus den Fünfzigerjahren," an ugly 1950s housing development now stands right next door. That last detail checks out independently: Wikipedia's account of the building states that the flat parts of the original park were built over with apartment blocks by the middle of the century. In 2005, Edgar Schwyn, an architect and business economist the site describes as a devoted collector of historic properties, bought the house from the heirs and began an expensive restoration. The site puts the core rebuild at 20 months, fixing years of water, smoke and general damage and bringing the wiring and plumbing up to modern standards.

Protected in 2007, contested all the way to the Federal Supreme Court

The restoration didn't end the story. It started a new one. In 2007, the City of Zurich placed the entire property under heritage protection, Denkmalschutz. Schwyn fought the designation: he wanted to run an architecture competition with the city for a new extension building and market the property to foreign companies as a corporate headquarters. He lost. In 2011, Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court rejected his appeal and confirmed that the house and its garden keep their status as a "hochrangiges Schutzobjekt," a high-ranking protected object. The 2007 order had already cut his planned building volume by more than 80 percent, though the city later approved some changes after all. Schwyn kept pushing: in 2019 he lost a first-instance case against the city in which he stood to receive compensation of CHF 20 to 60 million had he won. None of that appears anywhere on schlosssihlberg.ch, whose own kontakt page still talks about waiting for "die Denkmalpflege nach 10-jähriger Denkpause," heritage preservation's blessing after a 10-year pause for thought, as though the question were still open. By the outside record, it was settled years ago, just not in the direction the site's own copy seems to hope for.

A proposed cancer clinic, a language school that already moved in, and an owner who moved out

Schwyn's next chapter is still being written. He went public in 2025 with a new plan: turning the property into a cancer treatment center built around BNCT, a form of radiation therapy that, according to a Zurich University Hospital radiologist quoted in the coverage Wikipedia cites, is still experimental. Whether that plan happens is genuinely open. What has already happened is smaller: since 1 April 2025, a bilingual language school has occupied part of the property, per the same reporting, while Schwyn himself has moved his own residence out of the Enge quarter entirely, to Zurich-Seefeld on the other side of the city. None of this touches the wedding and events business schlosssihlberg.ch still sells. The GALLERY brand, the Castle Club membership scheme and the events team run their own operation inside a building whose longer-term future is still being argued over between the owner, the city, and now a hospital radiologist's opinion on an experimental cancer therapy.

What the GALLERY actually rents out: a vaulted cellar, a garden, a rooftop, and a tent

Strip away the family history and the planning dispute, and the bookable product is straightforward. The site's own room list splits the house into named spaces. The ground-floor Schlossgarten hosts, in the site's own words, a "Grillfest," a lounge setup, a flying dinner, weddings and birthdays. The vaulted Schloss Gewölbe below it is booked for dancing, product presentations, a "Hochzeitszeremonie," aperitifs, speeches and general parties, the one space the site names specifically for a wedding ceremony. The Dachgeschoss, the top floor, is pitched at lectures, seminars, talks, cooking shows and dinners, not weddings. A transparent tent, marketed as "The Tent," sits alongside as an add-on the site says borrows the castle's own presence for its uniqueness. The wedding page itself keeps its language generic: weddings share one page with seminars, corporate events, birthdays and product launches, and the entire pitch for a wedding runs to a single sentence about the rooms giving "dem wichtigsten Tag im Leben eine unvergleichliche Kulisse," the most important day of life an incomparable backdrop. Nothing on the domain names who performs a ceremony there or says whether it carries any legal standing; a couple booking the Gewölbe for a "Hochzeitszeremonie" is booking a room, not a registrar. On the operating side, the events team is 2 named people: Sven Zimmermann, listed as event manager and reachable at a separate ssz.ch address rather than the venue's own domain, and Dennis Schwyn, listed as technician and caretaker, at a third domain again. A summer catering menu heavy on grilled meat and fish (roastbeef, Spanish-style paella, smoked lamb, whole grilled sea bream) carries no printed prices at all, just an invitation to ask.

Schloss Sihlberg is a real, checkable piece of Zurich industrial history, just not quite the piece its own homepage claims. It was never the brewery. It was the brewery family's own private house, built on the same hill, sharing a name and 100 years of family ownership with the beer business next door, but always a separate building on a separate title. That distinction actually makes for a stronger story than the marketing line does: a lieutenant colonel spent a fortune on Gothic and Renaissance stone carving for a house his own descendants seemed to have little use for, it stood empty more than once, and it has kept standing mostly because a private owner has been fighting the city over its future since 2007 rather than replacing it with something larger. His other plans for the site, a corporate headquarters, a redevelopment competition, now a cancer clinic, have all stalled or lost so far. The wedding and events business is what is actually running there today, booked through a 2-person team and a contact form, in rooms whose stonework predates the operation by generations. A couple choosing it gets a genuinely unusual room, the vaulted cellar, the carved facades, the 6 sandstone children, and very little else in writing: no published prices, no named officiant, no promise about what the building becomes next.