Portal:Switzerland


The Switzerland Portal

Drapeau suisse
Drapeau suisse
Map of Switzerland
The Aletsch Glacier. Swiss Pines (Pinus cembra) are visible in the foreground.
The Aletsch Glacier. Swiss Pines (Pinus cembra) are visible in the foreground.
Location of Switzerland

Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Plateau, the Alps and the Jura; the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, whereas most of the country's nearly 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts its largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, and Lausanne.

Switzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with federal authorities based in Bern. It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss identity transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a Willensnation ("nation of volition") rather than a nation state.

Switzerland originates from the Old Swiss Confederacy established in the Late Middle Ages as a defensive and commercial alliance; the Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the country's founding document. The confederation steadily expanded and consolidated despite external threats and internal political and religious strife. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognised in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The confederation was among the first and few republics of the early modern period, and the only one besides San Marino to survive the Napoleonic Wars.

Switzerland remained a network of self-governing states until 1798, when revolutionary France invaded and imposed the centralist Helvetic Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic in 1803 and reinstated a confederation. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Switzerland restored its pre-revolutionary system, but by 1830 faced growing division and conflict between liberal and conservative movements; this culminated in a new constitution in 1848 that established the current federal system and enshrined principles such as individual rights, separation of powers, and parliamentary bicameralism. (Full article...)

This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.

Hischier at the 2017 NHL entry draft

Nico Hischier (born 4 January 1999) is a Swiss professional ice hockey centre and captain of the New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League (NHL). Hischier made his professional debut in his native Switzerland in 2015, spending time both in the top-tier National League A (NLA) and the second-tier National League B. He moved to North America for the 2016–17 season to play major junior hockey for the Halifax Mooseheads of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) in hopes of furthering his hockey career; in his first season in the QMJHL, he was named rookie of the year, along with the award for best rookie in the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), the governing body for major junior hockey in Canada. Internationally Hischier has represented Switzerland at several junior tournaments, including two World Junior Championships. Regarded as a strong two-way forward and a top prospect for the 2017 NHL entry draft, Hischier was selected first overall by the Devils, the first time a Swiss player was selected first overall, and made his NHL debut in 2017. He was named captain of the Devils in 2021. (Full article...)

Selected article - show another

Turnout at Faido multifunction station

The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT; German: Gotthard-Basistunnel, Italian: Galleria di base del San Gottardo, Romansh: Tunnel da basa dal Sogn Gottard) is a railway tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland. It opened in June 2016 and full service began the following December. With a route length of 57.09 km (35.47 mi), it is the world's longest railway and deepest traffic tunnel and the first flat, low-level route through the Alps. Located at the heart of the Gotthard axis, it is the third tunnel to connect the cantons of Uri and Ticino, after the Gotthard Tunnel and the Gotthard Road Tunnel.

The GBT consists of a large complex with, at its core, two single-track tunnels connecting Erstfeld (Uri) with Bodio (Ticino) and passing below Sedrun (Grisons). It is part of the New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA) project, which also includes the Ceneri Base Tunnel further south (opened on 3 September 2020) and the Lötschberg Base Tunnel on the other main north–south axis. It is referred to as a "base tunnel" since it bypasses most of the existing vertex line, the Gotthard railway line, a winding mountain route opened in 1882 across the Saint-Gotthard Massif, which was operating at its capacity before the opening of the GBT. The new base tunnel establishes a direct route usable by high-speed rail and heavy freight trains. (Full article...)

General images - show another

The following are images from various Switzerland-related articles on Wikipedia.

Featured article - show another

This is a Featured article, which represents some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

Portrait by Jakob Emanuel Handmann, 1753

Leonhard Euler (/ˈɔɪlər/ OY-lər; German: [ˈleːɔnhaʁt ˈɔʏlɐ] , Swiss Standard German: [ˈɔʏlər]; 15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss polymath who was active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, geographer, and engineer. He founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics, such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He also introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, and music theory. Euler has been called a "universal genius" who "was fully equipped with almost unlimited powers of imagination, intellectual gifts and extraordinary memory". He spent most of his adult life in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia.

Euler is credited for popularizing the Greek letter (lowercase pi) to denote the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, as well as first using the notation for the value of a function, the letter to express the imaginary unit , the Greek letter (capital sigma) to express summations, the Greek letter (capital delta) for finite differences, and lowercase letters to represent the sides of a triangle while representing the angles as capital letters. He gave the current definition of the constant , the base of the natural logarithm, now known as Euler's number. Euler made contributions to applied mathematics and engineering, such as his study of ships which helped navigation, his three volumes on optics contributed to the design of microscopes and telescopes, and he studied the bending of beams and the critical load of columns. (Full article...)

Selected picture - view another

Politics of Switzerland
Swiss Federal Council - Federal Assembly of Switzerland - List of political parties in Switzerland - Elections in Switzerland - Foreign relations of Switzerland - Swiss Armed Forces

Geography of Switzerland
Swiss Alps - Swiss plateau - Jura Mountains - List of lakes of Switzerland - List of rivers of Switzerland - List of glaciers in Switzerland - List of mountains of Switzerland - List of mountain passes in Switzerland - List of cities in Switzerland - Municipalities of Switzerland

History of Switzerland
Federal Charter of 1291 - Wilhelm Tell - The Early history of Switzerland - The Swiss Confederacy from 1291-1516 - The Reform - Early Modern Switzerland - Switzerland in the Napoleonic era - The Helvetic Republic - The Return of the Federation - A federal Republic - Switzerland during the World Wars - "Operation Tannenbaum" - Modern Switzerland

Cantons of Switzerland
Aargau - Appenzell Ausserrhoden - Appenzell Innerrhoden - Basel-Landschaft - Basel-Stadt - Bern - Fribourg - Geneva - Glarus - Graubünden - Jura - Lucerne - Neuchâtel - Nidwalden - Obwalden - St. Gallen - Schaffhausen - Schwyz - Solothurn - Thurgau - Ticino - Uri - Valais - Vaud - Zug - Zürich

Economy of Switzerland
List of Swiss companies - Swiss franc - Banking in Switzerland - Transportation in Switzerland - Energy in Switzerland - World Economic Forum - Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH - Tourism in Switzerland

Education in Switzerland
List of universities in Switzerland - Dual education system - Science and technology in Switzerland - CERN

Culture of Switzerland
German - French - Italian - Romansh - Swiss German - Francoprovençal - Music of Switzerland - Swiss cuisine - Swiss literature - SRG SSR idée suisse - Röstigraben - Sport in Switzerland

Swiss people (list)
David Aebischer - Ursula Andress - Jakob Bernoulli - Le Corbusier - Louis Chevrolet - Carla Del Ponte - Henry Dunant - Herzog & de Meuron - Friedrich Dürrenmatt - Albert Einstein - Leonhard Euler - Roger Federer - Marc Forster - Martin Gerber - Alberto Giacometti - Martina Hingis - Arthur Honegger - Carl Gustav Jung - Paul Klee - Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi - Clay Regazzoni - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Mark Streit - Huldrych Zwingli

New articles

This list was generated from these rules. Questions and feedback are always welcome! The search is being run daily with the most recent ~14 days of results. Note: Some articles may not be relevant to this project.

Rules | Match log | Results page (for watching) | Last updated: 2025-04-18 23:21 (UTC)

Note: The list display can now be customized by each user. See List display personalization for details.














WikiProject

If you are interested in contributing more to Switzerland related articles you may want to join WikiProject Switzerland.

Things you can do

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Sources

Discover Wikipedia using portals

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search