Nyon is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located some 25 kilometers north east of Geneva's city centre, and since the 1970s it has become part of the Geneva metropolitan area. It lies on the shores of Lake Leman and is the seat of the district of Nyon. The town has (as of December 2014) a population of 19,738. It is connected to the rest of Switzerland by way of the Route Suisse, the A1 Motorway and the railways of the Arc Lémanique.

Name

Nyon derives from one of the names used by the Romans for the town, Noviodunum or Noiodunum. Other names for the town, particularly of colonies placed there, are Colonia Iulia Equestris or Colonia Julia Equestris, Colonia Equestris Noiodunum, Equestris, Civitas Equestrium, and Civitas Equestrium Noiodunum.

History

Nyon is first mentioned around 367-407 as civitas Equestrium id est Noiodunus (in the "Notitia Galliarum"). In 1236 it was mentioned as Neveduni and in 1292 as Nyons.

Pre-Roman settlements

A few, scattered neolithic items were discovered in the 19th Century. North of the city some bronze rings and the ruins of a Bronze Age settlement were discovered.

Switzerland (/ˈswɪtsərlənd/), officially the Swiss Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, hence its abbreviation CH), is a country in Europe. While still named the "Swiss Confederation" for historical reasons, modern Switzerland is a federal directorial republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities, called Bundesstadt ("federal city"). The country is situated in Western and Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8 million people is concentrated mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found: among them are the two global and economic centres, Zürich and Geneva.

The establishment of the Swiss Confederation is traditionally dated to 1 August 1291, which is celebrated annually as the Swiss National Day. The country has a long history of armed neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and did not join the United Nations until 2002. Nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to numerous international organizations, including the second largest UN office. On the European level, it is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association, but notably it is not part of the European Union, nor the European Economic Area. However the country does participate in the Schengen Area and the EU's single market through a number of bilateral treaties.

Switzerland is an open source network-monitoring utility developed and released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Its goal is to monitor network traffic between two systems running the program to see if the user's internet service provider is violating network neutrality, like Comcast does with the BitTorrent protocol.

Switzerland was featured in the Technology section of an issue of New Scientist in August 2008.

See also

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Switzerland is a country in Europe.

Switzerland may also refer to: