Basel in the context of "Rheinfelden (Baden)"

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.

Switzerland is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons, with Bern serving as the federal city and the seat of the national government. The country encompasses four principal linguistic and cultural regions—German, French, Italian, and Romansh—reflecting a long-standing tradition of multilingualism and cultural pluralism. Swiss national identity nonetheless remains fairly cohesive, rooted in a shared historical background, common values such as federalism and direct democracy, and Alpine symbolism. Swiss nationhood transcends language, ethnicity, and religion, leading to Switzerland being described as a Willensnation ("nation of volition") rather than a conventional nation state.

A crozier or crosier (also known as a paterissa, pastoral staff, or bishop's staff) is a stylized staff that is a symbol of the governing office of a bishop or abbot and is carried by high-ranking prelates of Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, Church of South India and some Anglican, Lutheran, United Methodist and Pentecostal churches.

In Western Christianity the crozier typically takes the form of a shepherd's crook, a tool used to manage flocks of sheep and herds of goats. In Eastern Christianity, the crozier has two common forms: tau-shaped, with curved arms, surmounted by a small cross; or a pair of sculptured serpents or dragons curled back to face each other, with a small cross between them.

Geneva (/dʒɪˈniːvə/ jin-EE-və, Arpitan: [dzəˈnɛva] ; French: Genève [ʒ(ə)nɛv] ) is the second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Republic and Canton of Geneva. Geneva is a global city, an international financial centre, and a worldwide centre for diplomacy, which has led to it being called the "Peace Capital".

It hosts the highest number of international organizations in the world, including the headquarters of many agencies of the United Nations and the ICRC and IFRC of the Red Cross. It was where the Geneva Conventions on humanitarian treatment in war were signed, and, in the aftermath of World War I, it hosted the League of Nations. It shares a unique distinction with municipalities such as New York City, Bonn, Basel, and Strasbourg as a city which serves as the headquarters of at least one critical international organization without being the capital of a country.

Lausanne (/loʊˈzæn/ loh-ZAN, US also /loʊˈzɑːn/ loh-ZAHN; French: [lozan] ; Arpitan: Losena [lɔˈzəna] ) is the capital and largest city of the Swiss French-speaking canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. The Olympic capital, it is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway between the Jura Mountains and the Alps, and facing the French town of Évian-les-Bains across the lake. Lausanne is located (as the crow flies) 51.7 kilometres (32 miles) northeast of Geneva, the nearest major city. The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland convenes in Lausanne, although it is not the de jure capital of the nation.

The municipality of Lausanne has a population of about 150,000, making it the fourth largest city in Switzerland after Basel, Geneva, and Zurich, with the entire agglomeration area having about 420,000 inhabitants (as of January 2019). The metropolitan area of Lausanne-Geneva (including Vevey-Montreux, Yverdon-les-Bains, Valais and foreign parts), commonly designated as Arc lémanique was over 1.3 million inhabitants in 2017 and is the fastest growing in Switzerland.

The Council of Florence is the seventeenth ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church, held between 1431 and 1445. It was convened in territories under the Holy Roman Empire. Italy became a venue of a Catholic ecumenical council after a gap of about 2 centuries (the last ecumenical council to be held in Italy was the 4th Council of the Lateran in Rome's Lateran Palace). It was convoked in Basel as the Council of Basel by Pope Martin V shortly before his death in February 1431 and took place in the context of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. At stake was the greater conflict between the conciliar movement and the principle of papal supremacy.

The Council entered a second phase after Emperor Sigismund's death in 1437. Pope Eugene IV translated the Council to Ferrara on 8 January 1438, where it became the Council of Ferrara and succeeded in drawing some of the Byzantine ambassadors who were in attendance at Basel to Italy. Some Council members rejected the papal decree and remained at Basel: this rump Council suspended Eugene, declared him a heretic, and then in November 1439 elected an antipope, Felix V.

The Blue Banana (Dutch: blauwe banaan; French: banane bleue; German: Blaue Banane; Italian: banana blu), also known as the European Megalopolis or the Liverpool–Milan Axis, is a discontinuous corridor of urbanization in Western and Central Europe, with a population of around 100 million. Over time, the region has been referred to by several names, each reflecting its development and significance. Initially, French geographer Roger Brunet, as the leader of RECLUS (Network for the study of changes in locations and spatial units), described the area as 'the European Backbone', which depicted an urban corridor extending from Liverpool to Milan.

Characterized by significant industrialization and urbanization, this area has attracted numerous public and private enterprises since the early post-war period, prompting researchers and academics to investigate the factors behind its remarkable development within Europe. It stretches approximately from North West England through the English Midlands across Greater London to the European Metropolis of Lille, the Benelux states with the Dutch Randstad and the Flemish Diamond and along the German Ruhrgebiet, Rhineland, Southern Germany, Alsace-Moselle in France in the west and Switzerland (Basel and Zürich), Austria (Vorarlberg and Tyrol) to Northern Italy (Milan, Turin, and Genoa) in the south.

Bern (Swiss Standard German: [bɛrn] ), or Berne (French: [bɛʁn] ), is the de facto capital of Switzerland, referred to as the "federal city". With a population of about 146,000 (as of 2024), Bern is the fifth-most populous city in Switzerland, behind Zürich, Geneva, Basel and Lausanne. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000.

Bern is also the capital of the canton of Bern, the second-most populous of Switzerland's cantons. The city’s official language is German. The main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect, Bernese German. In 1983, the historic old town (in German: Altstadt) in the centre of Bern became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is notably surrounded by the Aare, a major river of the Swiss Plateau.

The University of Basel (Latin: Universitas Basiliensis; German: Universität Basel) is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest universities. The university is traditionally counted among the leading institutions of higher learning in the country.

The associated Basel University Library is the largest and among the most important libraries in Switzerland. The university hosts the faculties of theology, law, medicine, humanities and social sciences, science, psychology, and business and economics, as well as numerous cross-disciplinary subjects and institutes, such as the Biozentrum for biomedical research and the Institute for European Global Studies. In 2020, the university had 13,139 students and 378 professors. International students accounted for 27 percent of the student body.

Lake Constance (German: Bodensee, pronounced [ˈboːdn̩zeː] ) refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (Obersee), Lower Lake Constance (Untersee), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (lit. 'Rhine of the lake(s)'). These waterbodies lie within the Lake Constance Basin (Bodenseebecken) in the Alpine Foreland through which the Rhine flows. The nearby Mindelsee is not considered part of Lake Constance.The lake is situated where Germany, Switzerland, and Austria meet. Its shorelines lie in the German states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria; the Swiss cantons of St. Gallen, Thurgau, and Schaffhausen; and the Austrian state of Vorarlberg. The actual locations of the country borders within the lake are disputed, with Austria, Germany and Switzerland all holding different opinions on the matter.

The Alpine Rhine forms, in its original course (Alter Rhein), the Austro-Swiss border and flows into the lake from the south. The High Rhine flows westbound out of the lake and forms (with the exception of the Canton of Schaffhausen, Rafzerfeld and Basel-Stadt) the German-Swiss border as far as to the city of Basel. The Leiblach forms the Austria–Germany border east of the lake.