Gland, Switzerland

Gland is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. It is home to the headquarters of the IUCN and WWF and hosts the Secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands, known as the Ramsar Convention, and the online bank Swissquote also has its headquarters there. The place is known to have been a prehistoric settlement, and in the Roman period a farm called Villa Glanis stood there. Until the 1960s it was merely a small farming village of vineyards and cattle. It is first mentioned around 994 to 1049 as de Glans. In 1923 it provided the venue for the European Division meeting of the Seventh-day Adventists, and in the 1930s the defensive Toblerone line was built along its western edge, stretching from Lake Geneva towards the hills. The municipality covers about 8.3 square kilometres and had 13,258 residents in December 2020.