Canton of Zurich
canton in Switzerland
The canton of Zurich is an administrative unit (canton) of Switzerland, situated in the northeastern part of the country. With a population of 1,553,423 (as of 31 December 2020), it is the most populous canton of Switzerland. Zurich is the de facto capital of the canton, but is not specifically mentioned in the constitution. The official language is German. The local Swiss German dialect, called Züritüütsch, is commonly spoken.
The canton has the highest Human Development Index score (0.993) out of 1,790 subnational regions as of 2022. It is also a global financial center and has the fourth-highest GRP in Switzerland behind Basel-Stadt, Zug and Geneva by GDP per capita.
History
Early history
The prehistoric pile dwellings around Lake Zurich, which are located around Lake Zurich in the cantons of Schwyz, St. Gallen and Zurich, make up a considerable portion of the 56 sites in Switzerland that are included in the UNESCO World Heritage Prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. Nine of these UNESCO World Heritage sites are located on the shore of Lake Zurich: Freienbach–Hurden Rosshorn, Freienbach–Hurden Seefeld, Rapperswil-Jona/Hombrechtikon–Feldbach, Rapperswil-Jona–Technikum, Erlenbach–Winkel, Meilen–Rorenhaab, Wädenswil–Vorder Au, Zürich–Enge Alpenquai and Kleiner Hafner.
The public source identifies “Canton of Zurich” as canton in Switzerland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Canton, Zurich and canton.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11943. VIAF identifies the subject as 140174177. The Library of Congress control number is n80004251. Authority coordinates are 47.413, 8.656. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Canton of Zurich” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.