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About
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located at the intersection of Central, Western, and Southern Europe. It is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Austria and Liechtenstein to the east, and Italy to the south. Switzerland is geographically divided among the Swiss Alps, the Swiss Plateau, and the Jura Mountains; the Alps cover most of the country's territory, whereas the majority of its 9 million people are concentrated on the plateau, which hosts many of the largest cities and economic centres, including Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern, Lausanne, Winterthur, and Lucerne.
Read more on Wikipedia →The Flag
History
The national flag of Switzerland displays a white Greek cross in the centre of a red field. The white cross is known as the Swiss cross or the federal cross. Its arms are rectangular, with a ratio of height to width of 7:6 for the vertical arms and 6:7 for the horizontal arms. The size of the cross in relation to the field was set in 2017 as 5:8. The Swiss flag is square, instead of the rectangular shape typical for national flags.
Design & symbolism
According to the 2017 flag law (SR 232.21), "the Swiss flag shows a Swiss cross on a square background". Special provisions are made for the naval ensign and for civil aircraft identification. The Swiss cross is defined as Swiss Standard German consistently uses Fahne (cognate with vane) rather than the term Flagge used for national flags in Germany. The name of the flag of the Swiss Confederation is a nominal compound, Schweizerfahne. The flag is emblazoned in English as, "Gules, a cross coupée argent." While the proportions of the cross have been fixed since 1889, the size of the cross relative to the flag (the width of the margin separating the cross couped from the edge of the flag) had not been officially fixed prior to 2017. The annex to the flag law provides an image specifying that the margin is to be of the same width as the cross arms, so that the total height of the cross is fixed at 20:32 = 5:8 of the height of the flag (in other words, the width of the margin is 6:32 = 3:16). This ratio is also given as a "vexillological recommendation" in the flag regulation used by the Swiss Armed Forces. Flags with a cross of larger relative widths than the prescribed 20:32 =…
Text from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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