Rüti, Zürich

Rüti, sometimes written Rüti ZH to tell it apart from other places of that name, is a Swiss town and a municipality in the district of Hinwil in the canton of Zürich. The river Jona flows through the town. The area was probably first settled in the eighth and ninth centuries, and in 807 the quarter of Fägswil was mentioned in a document of the Abbey of Saint Gall. The name goes back to Riutun, an Old High German word for clearing forest to make farmland, in a document of Emperor Otto II from 972. The Rüti Monastery was endowed in 1206 by Lütold IV, Duke of Regensberg, and the building that is now the Reformed church was completed in 1283. The monastery was secularised in 1525, and industrialisation in the nineteenth century brought the town a connection to the cantonal road network in 1833 and to the Zürich to Rapperswil railway in 1859. The municipality covers about 10.06 square kilometres.