Hospental
municipality in the canton of Uri in Switzerland

Hospental (locally Oschpidall) is a village and a municipality in the middle of the Alpine valley called Urseren in the canton of Uri in Switzerland.
History
Hospental is first mentioned in 1285 as Hospenthal. In 1499 it was mentioned under its Latin name as Hospicium, and in 1616 as Spithal.
Geography
The municipality is located in the valley called Urseren at the intersection of the routes over the Furka Pass and the route over the Gotthard Pass. It consists of the linear village of Hospental and the hamlet of Zumdorf.
The Gotthardreuss runs through the village and forms together with the Furkareuss, traversing the village at its north border, the beginning of the Reuss.
Hospental has an area, as of 2006, of 35 km2 (14 sq mi). Of this area, 32.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while 9.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 1.4% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (56.6%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains). In the 1993/97 land survey, 0.8% of the total land area was heavily forested, while 8.9% is covered in small trees and shrubbery.
The public source identifies “Hospental” as municipality in the canton of Uri in Switzerland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hospental, municipality 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 Q65681. VIAF identifies the subject as 245429496. Authority coordinates are 46.621, 8.570. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1285, 1499, 1616 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hospental” 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.