Köniz

Geschichte

Köniz is a statistical town, however considers itself still as a village, and a municipality in the Bern-Mittelland administrative district right on the southern border to Bern in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. The municipality of Köniz as a single settlement would belong to the 15 most populous towns in Switzerland. It is also part of the larger agglomeration of Bern of about 400,000 inhabitants.The official language of Köniz is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect.HistoryThe current municipality has long been inhabited; there have been a number of Bronze- and Iron Age finds, as well as Roman villas (villae rusticae) and Early Middle Ages graveyards. The oldest parts of the current reformed parish church (formerly. St. Peter and Paul) date back to around 1100. There may have been other previous buildings on this site, but archaeological digs have uncovered no evidence of them thus far. Köniz is first mentioned in 1011 as Chunicis.