Brugg

Brugg, sometimes written Brugg AG to tell it from other places of the name, is a Swiss town and municipality in the canton of Aargau and the seat of the district of the same name. It lies where the Aare, Reuss and Limmat rivers meet, about sixteen kilometres from the cantonal capital Aarau, twenty-eight from Zurich and forty-five from Basel. The name is the Swiss German word for bridge, a reference to the medieval town founded under the Habsburgs at the narrowest point of the Aare on the Swiss Plateau, where the river squeezes through a gorge only about twelve metres wide. The oldest known Habsburg residence stands in the neighbourhood of Altenburg, and from 1415 until Napoleon's invasion in 1798 Brugg was a subject territory of Bern, belonging to Aargau since then. Today the town is home to the Swiss Farmers' Union, a campus of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland and an army engineer training unit. The Vindonissa museum is a heritage site of national significance.