Saxon, Switzerland

Saxon is a municipality, in the district of Martigny, in the canton of Valais, in Switzerland.

History

Saxon is first mentioned in 1153 as de Saxone

Geography

Saxon has an area, as of 2011, of 23.2 square kilometers (9.0 sq mi). Of this area, 31.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 50.6% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 9.3% is settled (buildings or roads) and 8.1% is unproductive land.

The municipality is located in the Martigny district, along the left bank of the Rhone. It stretches from the Pierre-à-Voir (2,476 metres [8,123 ft]) down to the Rhone. It consists of the villages of Saxon and Gottefrey and scattered hamlets.

Coat of arms

The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules a trefoil branch Argent

Demographics

Saxon has a population (as of December 2014) of 5,248.As of 2008, 28.8% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010 ) the population has changed at a rate of 29.8%. It has changed at a rate of 33.9% due to migration and at a rate of 1.3% due to births and deaths.

Saxon Switzerland

Saxon Switzerland (German: Sächsische Schweiz) is a hilly climbing area and national park around the Elbe valley south-east of Dresden in Saxony, Germany. Together with the Bohemian Switzerland in the Czech Republic it forms the Elbe Sandstone Mountains.

Saxon Switzerland alone has some 1,000 climbing peaks, as well as several hollows. The area is popular with Dresden locals and international climbers.

The administrative district for the area is Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The fortress of Königstein is a well-known landmark.

Derivation of the name

The German name for Saxon Switzerland, Sächsische Schweiz, appeared in the 18th century. Two Swiss artists, Adrian Zingg and Anton Graff, were appointed in 1766 to the Dresden Academy of Art.

They felt the landscape was reminiscent of their homeland, the Swiss Jura, and reported in their exchange of letters on the difference between their homeland and "Saxon Switzerland". Previously, the Saxon part of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains had merely been referred to as the Meissen Highlands (Meißner Hochland), Meissen Oberland (Meissen Oberland) or Heath above Schandau (Heide über Schandau).

Switzerland

Switzerland (/ˈswɪtsərlənd/), officially the Swiss Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, hence its abbreviation CH), is a country in Europe. While still named the "Swiss Confederation" for historical reasons, modern Switzerland is a federal directorial republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities, called Bundesstadt ("federal city"). The country is situated in Western and Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8 million people is concentrated mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found: among them are the two global and economic centres, Zürich and Geneva.

The establishment of the Swiss Confederation is traditionally dated to 1 August 1291, which is celebrated annually as the Swiss National Day. The country has a long history of armed neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and did not join the United Nations until 2002. Nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to numerous international organizations, including the second largest UN office. On the European level, it is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association, but notably it is not part of the European Union, nor the European Economic Area. However the country does participate in the Schengen Area and the EU's single market through a number of bilateral treaties.

Switzerland (software)

Switzerland is an open source network-monitoring utility developed and released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Its goal is to monitor network traffic between two systems running the program to see if the user's internet service provider is violating network neutrality, like Comcast does with the BitTorrent protocol.

Switzerland was featured in the Technology section of an issue of New Scientist in August 2008.

See also

References

External links

Switzerland (disambiguation)

Switzerland is a country in Europe.

Switzerland may also refer to: