Zürich Hauptbahnhof (often shortened to Zürich HB, or just HB; Zürich Main Station or Zürich Central Station) is the largest railway station in Switzerland. Zürich 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 second best European railway station in 2020. The station can be found at the northern end of the Altstadt, or old town, in central Zürich, near the confluence of the rivers Limmat and Sihl. The station is on several levels, with platforms both at ground and below ground level, and tied together by underground passages and the ShopVille shopping mall. The Sihl passes through the station in a tunnel with railway tracks both above and below. The station's railway yards extend about to the west. The station is included in the Swiss Inventory of Cultural Property of National Significance. Besides Zürich HB, there are 21 railway stations in the municipality of Zürich: Affoltern, , Binz, Brunau, , Friesenberg, Giesshübel, , Leimbach, Manegg, , Saalsporthalle, Schweighof, , , , , , , , and (excluding the five stations of the Forch railway, which uses the tracks of the tram system in Zürich). Another railway station, Letten, is out of service since 1989. History The first station The first Zürich 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 the initially the terminus of the Swiss Northern Railway, more often called the Spanisch-Brötli-Bahn, which opened on 9 August 1847 and linked Zürich 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