Morges

Morges is a lakeside town in the Swiss canton of Vaud, on the northern shore of Lake Geneva to the west of Lausanne, and it serves as the seat of the district that bears its name. Its documented history reaches back to the late Bronze Age, when pile-dwelling settlements stood along the lakefront at Grande-Cite, Vers-l'Eglise and Les Roseaux, some of whose timbers have been dated by tree rings to the second millennium BC. The present town was founded in 1286 by Louis of Savoy, received a charter in 1293 and was laid out on a regular plan with long parallel streets and a market square, becoming an administrative and trading centre. French is the main language of its roughly 16,000 residents, and about a third of the population are foreign nationals.