106 Fun Facts About Switzerland

How many cantons make up the Swiss Confederation?

26 cantons make up Switzerland; the newest, Jura, was created in 1979 after French-speaking Catholic separatists campaigned for decades to leave a mostly German-speaking, Protestant canton.

Which city is Switzerland's de facto capital, known as the "federal city"?

Bern beat Zurich and Lucerne in a parliamentary vote on 28 November 1848, but the constitution names no capital, which is why it is officially only the 'federal city'.

How many national languages does Switzerland have?

Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh, the last spoken by about 0.5% of the population, mainly in Graubünden.

Which Latin name for Switzerland gives the country its code CH and its internet domain .ch?

Confoederatio Helvetica was coined after the federal state was founded in 1848, a Latin label that favours none of the national languages; it has appeared on Swiss coins since 1879.

Europe's powers recognised Swiss neutrality after which ruler's defeat?

Napoleon's fall sent Switzerland's future to the Congress of Vienna, where the powers recognised its neutrality in 1815 because a neutral buffer between rival great powers suited them all.

Which organisation did Switzerland join only in 2002?

The United Nations admitted Switzerland on 10 September 2002 after about 55% of voters backed joining; in 1986 three in four had voted no.

The 1847 Swiss civil war was fought against a breakaway alliance of Catholic cantons known as what?

The Sonderbund, a separate league of seven Catholic cantons formed in 1845, was beaten by the federal army in under a month in November 1847, clearing the way for the 1848 constitution.

Which fictional detective did his author try to kill off in 1893 with a plunge into Switzerland's Reichenbach Falls?

Sherlock Holmes went over the falls with Moriarty because Conan Doyle wanted time for 'better things'; readers cancelled their Strand subscriptions in their thousands, and he later brought Holmes back.

Which canton was the last to give women the vote in cantonal affairs, in 1990?

Appenzell Innerrhoden gave way only when local women sued and the Federal Supreme Court ruled against the canton in November 1990, 19 years after Swiss women won the federal vote in 1971.

Which seven-member body is Switzerland's collective head of state?

The Federal Council's seven members are elected by parliament and share power equally: the presidency passes to a different member each year and carries no special authority.

How many signatures must a Swiss popular initiative gather within 18 months to force a national vote?

100,000 valid signatures in 18 months force a vote on changing the constitution; the bar was 50,000 until 1977, and the first initiative to pass, in 1893, banned slaughter without stunning.

What is unusual about the shape of the Swiss national flag?

It is square because the national flag followed the square war flag adopted for the Swiss army; Swiss ships, by contrast, fly a rectangular version.

Dufourspitze, the highest peak in Switzerland, is a summit of which mountain?

Monte Rosa's Dufourspitze reaches 4,634 m; marked simply 'Highest Peak' on old Swiss maps, it was renamed in 1863 to honour General Dufour, who led the first official mapping of the country.

Edward Whymper's party made the first ascent of which peak in 1865, losing four men on the descent?

The Matterhorn was a race: Whymper's seven reached the top while a rival Italian party was still climbing the far side. On the descent one man slipped and dragged three others down before the rope broke.

The name Toblerone blends its founder's surname with which Italian word?

Torrone (nougat) plus Tobler named the bar launched in 1908; in 2023 its Alpine-peak logo was dropped because some production moved to Slovakia, breaking Swiss rules on national symbols.

Which is the largest lake in Switzerland, fed and drained by the Rhône?

Lake Geneva, Lac Léman in French, lies about 60% in Switzerland and 40% in France; Mary Shelley began Frankenstein at a villa above its shore in the cold, stormy summer of 1816.

The Rhône rises at a glacier in the Swiss Alps and flows into which sea?

The Mediterranean receives the Rhône through the Camargue delta after a run of more than 800 km; the Rhine, born in the same Alps, flows the opposite way to the North Sea.

The Gotthard Base Tunnel took which world record from Japan's Seikan Tunnel in 2016?

The longest railway bore on Earth at 57 km, the Gotthard Base Tunnel gives trains a flat, low-level route through the Alps, so heavier and longer freight trains can cross without a climb.

At 3,454 metres, which is the highest railway station in Europe?

Jungfraujoch was not the planned last stop: the line was meant to reach the Jungfrau's summit, but after 16 years of tunnelling through the Eiger and Mönch it ended at the saddle in 1912.

The Aletsch Glacier, the largest in the Alps, lies in which canton?

Valais holds all of the Great Aletsch Glacier even though it lies in the Bernese Alps: the ice flows down the range's southern side towards the Rhône valley, and has been retreating since the 19th century.

The Rhine Falls, Europe's most powerful waterfall, lie between Zurich and which other canton?

Schaffhausen owes its existence to the falls: the Rhine could not be navigated past them, so boats unloaded there and the town grew up where goods were carried on overland.

Which Swiss city is home to the Bank for International Settlements?

Basel has housed the Bank for International Settlements since 1930; it was set up to collect and distribute Germany's First World War reparations, the 'settlements' of its name.

Which Swiss businessman founded the Red Cross and won the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901?

Henry Dunant witnessed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in 1859 while travelling to petition the French emperor; his memoir led to the Red Cross, and he shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

Which force, founded in 1506, recruits only Swiss citizens?

The Vatican's papal guard dates from 1506, when Pope Julius II took on a contingent of Swiss mercenaries; 147 of them died defending Clement VII during the Sack of Rome in 1527.

Swiss surrealist painter Giger shared an Oscar for his designs for which 1979 film?

Alien got its creature after director Ridley Scott saw Giger's picture Necronom IV and pressed a reluctant studio to hire the artist as its designer.

Under the Swiss militia system, what do soldiers famously keep at home?

Swiss militia soldiers keep their army-issued weapons at home between service periods, a practice voters upheld in a 2011 referendum; ammunition has not been issued for home storage since 2007.

What was Albert Einstein's day job in Switzerland when he published special relativity in 1905?

Patent office clerk was the job Einstein took because, despite his diploma, he could not find a teaching post; he wrote his 1905 papers in his spare time and left for a professorship only in 1909.

CERN, the particle physics laboratory, straddles the French border just outside which Swiss city?

Geneva's suburb of Meyrin is home to CERN, where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 so that scientists in different countries could share information.

Which of these was NOT invented in Switzerland?

Aspirin was a German product, launched by Bayer in 1899; absinthe (1790s), the Rex peeler (1947) and the scanning tunnelling microscope (IBM's Rüschlikon lab, 1981) all came from Switzerland.

Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann's first deliberate LSD trip on 19 April 1943 is now commemorated as what?

Bicycle Day marks the day Hofmann deliberately swallowed LSD at the Sandoz lab and, with wartime limits on car use, had his assistant escort him home by bicycle as the effects took hold.

What gave Swiss engineer George de Mestral the idea for Velcro?

De Mestral examined burdock burs stuck to his dog and his trousers after an Alpine walk, saw their tiny hooks under a microscope, and patented the hook-and-loop fastener in 1955.

Helvetica was designed in 1957 by Miedinger and Hoffmann under what original name?

Helvetica began in 1957 as Neue Haas Grotesk at the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein; Stempel renamed it in 1960, using the Latin adjective for Swiss, to sell it internationally.

Nestlé is headquartered in which lakeside Swiss town?

Vevey, in the canton of Vaud, has been Nestlé's home since the 1860s; Charlie Chaplin spent his final decades just outside the town after he was forced to leave the United States in 1952.

Which Swiss watch brand was founded in London in 1905 under the name Wilsdorf & Davis?

Rolex was the name German-born Hans Wilsdorf registered in 1908 for the wristwatches he assembled in London from Swiss movements; he moved the firm to Switzerland after the First World War.

Which company grew from Karl Elsener's workshop, which began making the Swiss army's pocket knives in 1891?

Victorinox grew from the cutlery workshop Elsener opened in 1884; the army's first soldier's knives had to be ordered abroad, from Solingen, so in 1891 he and fellow Swiss cutlers banded together to make them at home.

Muesli was developed around 1900 by Maximilian Bircher-Benner for whom?

Patients in his hospital got the dish because Bircher-Benner believed raw apple had cured his own jaundice; he called it Apfeldiätspeise, the 'apple diet meal'.

Fribourg's moitié-moitié fondue melts Vacherin Fribourgeois with an equal amount of which famous Swiss cheese?

Gruyère makes up half of a moitié-moitié, French for 'half-half'; fondue itself became the national dish only after the Swiss Cheese Union promoted it in the 1930s to sell more cheese.

Which traditional Swiss dish is a flat cake of grated, pan-fried potatoes?

Rösti began as a farmers' breakfast in German-speaking Switzerland; it is so tied to that region that the cultural divide with the French-speaking west is jokingly called the Röstigraben, the rösti ditch.

Heidi, the orphan girl who lives with her grandfather in the Alps, was created by which Swiss author?

Johanna Spyri published Heidi in 1880-81; a 1974 Japanese cartoon series directed by Isao Takahata later carried the story, and its picture of Switzerland, to generations of viewers worldwide.

According to legend, William Tell shot an apple off his son's head after defying which reeve?

The legend has Tell defy the Habsburg reeve Gessler by refusing to bow to his hat on a pole in Altdorf, around 1307; the tale was first written down in the 1470s.

Which reformer's movement in Zurich led to Switzerland's religious Wars of Kappel in 1529 and 1531?

Huldrych Zwingli marched out with Zurich's troops and was killed in the second battle at Kappel in October 1531; John Calvin's reform came a generation later.

Which country's 1798 invasion replaced the old Swiss Confederacy with the Helvetic Republic?

France turned the self-governing cantons into mere administrative districts on its own centralised model; uprisings dogged the new republic, and an 1803 settlement restored the cantons.

Which two sports have their world governing bodies headquartered in Zurich?

Football and ice hockey are both run from Zurich, though FIFA did not start there: seven European countries founded it in Paris in 1904 and it moved later; the IIHF dates from 1908.

In which Swiss city is the International Olympic Committee based?

Lausanne has housed the IOC since its founder Pierre de Coubertin moved the headquarters there during the First World War; he is buried in the city, but his heart was interred at ancient Olympia.

Roger Federer won eight men's singles titles at which Grand Slam tournament?

Wimbledon gave Federer eight titles between 2003 and 2017; he had won the junior title there in 1998 and knocked out seven-time champion Pete Sampras in 2001.

Schwingen, considered by some the Swiss national sport, is a form of what?

Wrestling in a sawdust ring, each Schwinger grips the other's canvas shorts; by tradition the winner brushes the sawdust off the loser's back, and a festival champion's prize is a live bull.

The World Economic Forum's annual meeting is held in which Swiss resort?

Davos is where the World Economic Forum began in 1971, when Klaus Schwab gathered European executives there; the 2002 meeting moved to New York in solidarity after the 11 September attacks.

Besides Switzerland, which country uses the Swiss franc as legal tender?

Liechtenstein dropped the Austrian krone for the Swiss franc in the early 1920s, as the krone lost its value after the First World War, and tied itself to Switzerland in a customs union soon after.

How does an alphorn player move from one note to another?

Changing lip tension is the only way: the alphorn is a plain wooden tube with no valves or finger holes, so it sounds only its natural harmonics, which Alpine herdsmen used to signal to one another.

In mid-1940 Swiss fighter pilots shot down 11 aircraft of which country for violating Swiss airspace?

Germany lost the 11 aircraft during its invasion of France, even though Switzerland's own Messerschmitt fighters had been bought from Germany; after threats from Berlin, Swiss pilots were ordered to avoid air combat.

Which art movement was launched by wartime exiles at Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire in 1916?

Dada took shape when artists and war resisters who had fled to neutral Switzerland, led by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, opened the Cabaret Voltaire for nightly performances and manifestos.

Which peace settlement formally recognised Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire?

Westphalia's peace of 1648 freed the Swiss from the empire thanks to one envoy, Johann Rudolf Wettstein, who came to plead for his own city's merchants and ended up negotiating for the whole Confederacy.

Which Roman general turned back the migrating Helvetii at Bibracte in 58 BC?

Julius Caesar ordered the beaten Helvetii to go home and rebuild the villages they had burned before setting out, because he did not want tribes from across the Rhine moving into the empty land.

Which canton joined Uri and Unterwalden in the Confederacy's founding alliance?

Schwyz took the lead in the early league with Uri and Unterwalden, so its name, in the dialect form Schweiz, spread first to the three founders and then to the whole confederation.

Swiss expansion suffered a major setback with defeat at which 1515 battle?

Marignano, fought near Milan over two days, set Swiss pikemen against Francis I's artillery and cavalry; France retook Milan, the Swiss made peace, and their push into Italy was over.

Which three cantons did the Congress of Vienna confirm as new members of Switzerland?

Valais, Neuchâtel and Geneva made 22 cantons; Neuchâtel was the odd one out, a canton whose prince was still the King of Prussia until a revolution in 1848.

Under Swiss animal welfare law, which sociable pet is it illegal to keep without a companion?

Guinea pig owners in Switzerland must keep at least a pair, because a lone animal is judged to suffer. A rent-a-guinea-pig service sprang up to supply a companion when one of a pair dies.

Which British rock band wrote a 1972 song about watching the Montreux Casino burn during a Frank Zappa concert?

Deep Purple had come to Montreux to record when a fan's flare gun set the casino alight. The haze drifting across the lake gave bassist Roger Glover the title Smoke on the Water.

Which American-born Queen of Rock 'n' Roll gave up her US passport and became a Swiss citizen in 2013?

Tina Turner had moved to Switzerland in the mid-1990s with her partner Erwin Bach, and the couple married at their lakeside home in Küsnacht in the same year she changed nationality.

Which chiming souvenir, often credited to Switzerland, was actually developed in Germany's Black Forest?

Cuckoo clock exports made the Black Forest world-famous from the mid-1850s. The Swiss contribution was a later one: the case shaped like an Alpine chalet.

At which Swiss waterfall near Meiringen did Arthur Conan Doyle send Sherlock Holmes over the edge with Moriarty?

Reichenbach Falls is where Holmes and his arch-enemy Moriarty fight to the death in The Final Problem. A plaque marks the ledge, and Meiringen keeps a Sherlock Holmes museum.

Which Swiss artist won an Oscar for designing the nightmarish creature in Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien?

H. R. Giger based the xenomorph on his own painting Necronom IV. He shared the 1980 Academy Award for visual effects with the rest of the film's effects team.

Which English scientist invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN on the Swiss border?

Tim Berners-Lee designed the Web so that CERN's physicists could share documents. The proposal he handed in that March did not even give the system a name.

Which Canadian singer won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest while representing Switzerland?

Céline Dion took the title in Dublin with a French-language song, Ne partez pas sans moi. It was composed by Atilla Şereftuğ, with words by Nella Martinetti.

Which giant dog breed did monks at an Alpine pass hospice on the Swiss-Italian border raise for rescue work?

St. Bernard dogs take their name from the Great St Bernard Pass, where the hospice acquired its first animals in the 1660s. The most famous, Barry, reportedly saved between 40 and 100 lives.

What has Swiss building law required beneath new homes since the 1960s?

Nuclear fallout shelters have been tallied at room for 114% of Swiss residents, against 81% in Sweden and just 3% in Germany. Large communal ones were stocked with food and fuel for over four months.

Which Swiss cheese gets its famous holes from gas released by bacteria around tiny specks of hay dust?

Emmental is named after the valley of the river Emme, and for centuries its makers treated the holes, known as eyes, as a flaw to be avoided.

Which Swiss dish is made by heating a half-wheel of cheese and scraping the melted layer onto boiled potatoes?

Raclette began as peasant food in the Alps, where the cheese was softened beside a campfire in the evening and scraped onto bread.

Which Swiss tennis player became the youngest world number one in history as a teenager in the 1990s?

Martina Hingis was born in Košice, in what was then Czechoslovakia, and went on to hold the top singles ranking for 209 weeks.

Which Swiss resort hosted the Winter Olympics in both 1928 and 1948 and is home to the Cresta Run?

St. Moritz is also where Alpine winter tourism began, after hotelier Caspar Badrutt wagered four British summer guests that they would enjoy a winter stay or he would repay their travel costs.

Which Swiss village at the foot of the Matterhorn bans petrol cars to keep its mountain views clear?

Zermatt allows only small electric vehicles for local trade. It is also the western terminus of the Glacier Express, billed as the slowest express train in the world.

Which body of water on the Rhine do Switzerland, Germany and Austria share at the northern foot of the Alps?

Lake Constance is called the Bodensee in German, and it is really three waters: an upper lake, a lower lake and a short stretch of the Rhine joining them.

Which tributary of the Rhine both rises and ends inside Switzerland and drains close to half of Swiss territory?

Aare water starts at a glacier in the high Alps and joins the Rhine about 295 km later, by which point it is carrying more water than the Rhine itself.

Which Swiss-born pioneer of modern architecture appeared in his round spectacles on the 10-franc banknote?

Le Corbusier was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a mountain city just 5 km from the French border.

Which Swiss psychiatrist broke with Sigmund Freud and founded the school of analytical psychology?

Carl Jung gave everyday speech the ideas of the introvert and the extravert, along with the collective unconscious and its archetypes.

Which Swiss actress walked out of the Caribbean as Honey Ryder in Dr. No, the first James Bond film?

Ursula Andress was cast just two weeks before filming, from a photograph taken by her husband John Derek, and her lines were dubbed by another actress.

Which Swiss chocolatier invented the conching machine in 1879, giving chocolate a much finer consistency?

Rodolphe Lindt later sold his factory and the secret of conching to the Sprüngli firm for 1.5 million gold francs, which is how Lindt & Sprüngli got its double name.

Which anise-flavoured spirit, nicknamed the green fairy, was created in Switzerland and banned there from 1910?

Absinthe was outlawed after a Swiss farmer who had been drinking it murdered his family in 1905. The ban was written into the constitution and lasted nearly 100 years.

Which malted milk drink, originally made with eggs, did the Swiss chemist Wander develop in 1904?

Ovaltine is sold in Switzerland under its original name, Ovomaltine, which joins ovum, the Latin for egg, to malt.

Which sport did Switzerland ban for decades after a 1955 disaster in France killed more than 80 people?

Circuit motor racing was declared unsafe by the Swiss government after the Le Mans crash. Later Swiss Grands Prix had to be run across the border at Dijon in France.

Which Swiss peak has a north face so deadly that German speakers nicknamed it the Murder Wall?

Eiger climbers have died on the face at least 64 times since 1935, and its nickname Mordwand is a grim pun on Nordwand, the German for north wall.

Which Swiss brand made the Speedmaster, the first wristwatch worn by an astronaut walking on the Moon?

Omega first timed the Olympic Games in 1932, and it took over from Rolex on James Bond's wrist with GoldenEye in 1995.

Which tournament favourites lost the 1954 FIFA World Cup final, played in Switzerland, to West Germany?

Hungary went down 3–2, handing the West Germans a first world title. The Hungarians had knocked out the defending champions, Uruguay, in the semi-finals.

Which anarchic art movement was born in 1916 among émigré artists at Switzerland's Cabaret Voltaire?

Dadaism took shape in neutral territory while the First World War raged, after Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings opened the cabaret for nightly performances and manifestos.

Which Russian revolutionary ended years of Swiss exile in April 1917 by taking a train across wartime Germany?

Vladimir Lenin was one of 32 Russians let through by a German government that hoped they would cause trouble for its enemy. The famous sealed carriage was a cover story.

Which Tintin character did Hergé model on the Swiss balloonist Auguste Piccard?

Professor Calculus is a scaled-down Piccard, Hergé said, because the real man was very tall. Piccard's balloon made him the first person to enter the stratosphere.

Which computer accessories maker, known for its mice, was founded in the Swiss village of Apples in 1981?

Logitech took its name from logiciel, the French word for software, and built its first mouse in Switzerland in 1982.

Which Italian town on Lake Lugano is entirely surrounded by Swiss territory?

Campione d'Italia pays its salaries in Swiss francs, although the euro is formally its only legal tender. Its casino was founded in 1917.

Which mountain above Lake Lucerne is climbed by the world's steepest cogwheel train, on a 48% gradient?

Pilatus is, in one local legend, the burial place of Pontius Pilate. Engineer Eduard Locher's line has carried passengers up it since 1889.

Which traditional Swiss farmers' sport has batters whip a puck downfield while fielders swat it down with wooden boards?

Hornussen comes from Hornuss, meaning hornet, the name of the puck. It is contested by two teams of 16 to 20 players who take turns striking and defending.

Which woolly white Alpine flower is a national symbol of Switzerland as well as of Austria?

Edelweiss wears its coat of white hairs as protection: the wool cuts water loss and scatters the harsh ultraviolet light of high altitudes.

Which Hollywood star and UNICEF ambassador died in 1993 at her home in the Swiss village of Tolochenaz?

Audrey Hepburn is buried in the village cemetery. Her ties to Switzerland went back decades: she had married her co-star Mel Ferrer there in 1954.

Which island castle near Montreux inspired a Byron poem about a prisoner held in its dungeon?

Chillon Castle covers a small limestone rock just offshore. Byron's poem The Prisoner of Chillon retells the jailing there of François Bonivard.

Which animal lies dying in the cliff-face memorial at Lucerne to Swiss soldiers killed in Paris in 1792?

A lion was designed for the site by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and hewn into the wall of an old sandstone quarry in 1820–21.

Which Swiss soft drink, created in 1952 and often called a national beverage, is made from milk whey?

Rivella grew out of a recipe first meant for a beer brewed with whey, and in 1977 it began sponsoring the Swiss national ski team.

Which sailing trophy did Switzerland's Alinghi win at its first attempt in 2003, bringing it back to Europe?

America's Cup holders Team New Zealand were beaten by a syndicate set up by Ernesto Bertarelli. No team had taken the trophy to Europe since the first race in 1851.

Which canton south of the Alps is the only one where Italian is the sole official language?

Ticino is named after its main river, has Bellinzona as its capital and Lugano as its largest city, and prides itself on a Mediterranean way of life.

Which canton, the largest by area, banned all cars from its roads between 1900 and 1925?

Graubünden voters upheld the ban in referendum after referendum before finally lifting it in 1925. It is also the only canton with three official languages.

Which canton became the youngest in Switzerland when it split from a larger neighbour in 1979?

Jura is French-speaking, with Delémont as its capital. Its creation needed the approval of the whole Swiss electorate, which voted in favour in 1978.

Which canton, where citizens vote by raised hand at an open-air assembly, lowered its voting age to 16 in 2007?

Glarus was the first canton to give 16-year-olds the vote. Its assembly, the Landsgemeinde, is first recorded in 1387, and a vote there is cast simply by raising a hand.

Which small canton, known for its low business taxes, began accepting Bitcoin for tax bills in 2021?

Zug is one of the smallest cantons by area, but its tax rates have drawn in a crowd of companies. It converts the cryptocurrency it receives straight into Swiss francs.

Which animal's head has appeared on the seal and arms of the founding canton of Uri since the 13th century?

A bull has long been tied to Uri by a popular etymology that links the canton's name to ûr, the old German word for the wild aurochs.

Which royal dynasty takes its name from a castle built in the 1020s in present-day canton Aargau?

Habsburg rulers kept their ancestral fortress until 1415, when Duke Frederick IV of Austria lost the Aargau to the Swiss Confederacy.

What traditional name covers Obwalden, Nidwalden and four other Swiss states with one Council of States seat each?

Half-cantons come in three pairs, two of them the result of a historic division. The 1999 federal constitution dropped the term and designates each one simply as a canton.

Which language descended from Latin, the main tongue of about 40,000 Swiss, became a national language in 1938?

Romansh grew from the spoken Latin that Roman soldiers and officials brought to the Alps after 15 BC. Since 1996 its speakers may also write to the federal government in it.

Which cantonal capital on the Rhine, settled for more than 5,000 years, is reputedly the oldest town in Switzerland?

Chur has yielded traces of settlement from the Pfyn culture of 3900–3500 BC, and under the Roman emperor Diocletian it became the capital of the province of Raetia prima.