Granges

Geschichte

Grenchen is a municipality in the district of Lebern in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland.It is located at the foot of the Jura mountains between Solothurn and Biel, approximately 25km north of Bern. With over 16,000 inhabitants, it is one of the larger towns of the canton of Solothurn. The city is well known for its watch industry, that has been present for more than 150 years.Grenchen is the 2008 winner of the Wakker Prize for architectural heritage.Jura-Sternwarte Grenchen is located at Grenchen.HistoryAround 1000 AD, the local barons built a castle on the local cliff that was inhabited for three centuries. The name Grenchen was first documented in 1131 as Granechun. The name comes from the gallo-romanic graneca, meaning by the granary. 1851: Clock manufacture begins 1918: General strikeGeographyGrenchen has an area, of 26.01km2. Of this area, 9.85km2 or 37.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 10.42km2 or 40.1% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 5.39km2 or 20.7% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.34km2 or 1.3% is either rivers or lakes and 0.05km2 or 0.2% is unproductive land.Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 2.2% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 9.7% and transportation infrastructure made up 6.8%. while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.4%. Out of the forested land, 38.5% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.5% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 25.8% is used for growing crops and 6.0% is pastures and 5.3% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.