Sierre

Sierre is the capital municipality of the district of Sierre, in the Rhône valley in the canton of Valais in Switzerland, with 16,819 residents at the end of 2020 and an area of about 19.2 square kilometres. It is nicknamed the City of the Sun, for an average of about 300 days of sunshine a year. It is the last official French-speaking city in Valais before the French-German language border of the canton at the forêt de Finges, a few kilometres beyond the town, and a German-speaking minority makes up around 8 percent of its population. Sierre was first mentioned around 800 as Sidrium, although a 12th-century document refers to the village as founded in 515; it appears as Sirro in 1179 and as Syder in 1393. The area around the modern town, especially the Gerunden hill, was settled very early, with Neolithic objects, Bronze Age weapons and jewellery, Early Iron Age objects and Roman inscriptions found there.