Geography quiz: Do you know the capital of every Swiss canton and what exact role those places have? Find out all about it in this article.
Some capitals are no-brainers because they have the same name as the cantons themselves — for instance, Zurich, Geneva, and Bern.
Others are different, and may be harder to remember — unless you actually live in that canton and have no excuse not to know this basic information.
Here are Switzerland’s 26 cantonal capitals (in alphabetic order), along with their official abbreviations:
Aargau (AG): Aarau
Appenzell Innerrhoden (AI): Appenzell
Appenzell Ausserrhoden (AR): Herisau
Basel-City (BS): Basel
Basel Country (BL): Liestal
Bern (BE): Bern
Fribourg (FR): Fribourg
Geneva (GE): Geneva
Glarus (GL): Glarus
Graubünden (GR): Chur
Jura (JU): Delémont
Lucerne (LU): Lucerne
Neuchâtel (NE): Neuchâtel
Nidwalden (NW): Stans
Obwalden (OW): Sarnen
St.Gallen (SG): St.Gallen
Schaffhausen (SH): Schaffhausen
Schwyz (SZ): Schwyz
Solothurn (SO): Solothurn
Thurgau (TG): Frauenfeld
Ticino (TI): Bellinzona
Uri (UR): Altdorf
Valais (VS): Sion
Vaud (VD):: Lausanne
Zug (ZG): Zug
Zurich (ZH): Zurich
What about ‘half’ cantons?
There are six of them: Obwalden, Nidwalden, Basel-City, Basel-Country, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, and Appenzell Innerrhoden.
The only difference between them is the number of elected officials representing them in the Council of States: half cantons only get one, while ‘full’ cantons get two seats.
But each ‘half’ has its own capital and, for all practical and legal intents and purposes, is sovereign from its ‘other half.’
What is the role of a cantonal capital?
These cities, towns and municipalities have political and administrative responsibilities relating to their respective populations.
Like Bern on the federal level, cantonal capitals are seats of local parliaments, courts, and other government offices and departments that regulate and oversee all public entities and infrastructure on their territories — for instance, taxes, schools, healthcare system, public transport, law enforcement, and social affairs.
The decisions about these services and their enforcement are being made in the cantonal capital (though some are left to municipalities, albeit on a smaller scale).
READ ALSO: Could Lausanne lose title as capital of Vaud?
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But there is more
If you are a foreign national who is planning to obtain Swiss citizenship, the capital of your canton will play an important role in this procedure.
That’s because the authorities there are responsible for processing your application and determining whether it can be approved and passed on to the municipality for further action.
So if someone says “your application is being sent to Lausanne,” or “you have to wait until the decision is made in Bellinzona,” you will know exactly what this means.
