Just as England has countries, what is Switzerland divided up into?

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imdashti

Switzerland is composed of 26 Cantons. The biggest in area is Graunbunden (Grisons) in the southeast of the country. The largest in population is Zurich in the north.

mZZc

Switzerland is split up in something called Kantone.

dave m

last i heard england was a country divided into counties

doodlebug

Cantons, or Kantons, which are like counties.

Goddess of Grammar

England has counties, not countries.

Switzerland has cantons, but not exactly 26 of them. It's just a weirder country than that.

Switzerland has 20 full-fledged cantons, and six other entities that are cantons for most purposes, but are considered half-cantons for the purpose of representation in one of the levels of government. They all started off as single cantons, but at some point in their histories (each for different reasons), decided to split from each other. However, they didn't split entirely apart, possibly because they didn't want to give up the name. On the other hand, the newest canton, Jura, DID split entirely from the canton it used to be a part of, Bern.

They really should be listed in the order in which they entered the confederation, but I'm not that good, so I'll just do alphabetical:

Aargau
Appenzell Inner Rhoden and Appenzell Outer Rhoden (split for religious reasons, Catholic vs. Protestant)
Basel Landschaft and Basel Stadt (split for political reasons, country vs. city)
Bern
Fribourg/Freiburg (one canton, two names, because it's biligual)
GenÃ¨ve (Geneva)
Glarus
Graubunden (probably has some other official names, has three languages. Grigioni or something. It's Grissons in French, and arguably also in English.)
Jura (split from Bern for linguistic reasons, French vs. German)
Luzern
Neuchatel
Schaffhausen
Schwytz (One of the Original Three, obviously)
Solothurn
St. Gallen
Thurgau
Ticino
Unterwalden (one of the Original Three, but now two half-cantons, Nidwalden and Oberwalden. Presumably only sticking together to be able to claim they're in the Original Three. Don't know why they split.)
Uri (one of the Original Three)
Valais/Wallis (one canton, two languages again)
Vaud
Zug
Zurich

Santero

Switzerland is divided into Cantons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland

Cantons are divided into Districts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Districts_of_Switzerland

Districts are divided into Municipalities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipalities_of_Switzerland

Greetings from Switzerland!

Sharmila

It's split into cantons... they're kind of like states.

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