Chavannes-près-Renens

Chavannes-près-Renens is a small, densely built municipality in the Swiss canton of Vaud, in the district of Ouest Lausannois on the western edge of the Lausanne agglomeration. Its eastern part was already inhabited in Roman times, when a bronze figurine, an axe, knives and iron items were left there, and from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century it was a rural community centred on farming. The place is first mentioned in 1224 as Chavanes. It covers only about 1.7 square kilometres, of which roughly two thirds is settled with buildings and roads, and its population has grown from about 4,900 in 1980 to over 10,000 in the latest official estimate.