Schlieren, Switzerland

Schlieren is a municipality in the district of Dietikon in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland. It lies south of the river Limmat in the Limmat Valley, west of the city of Zürich, and forms part of the Zürich metropolitan area. The oldest artifact found in the canton of Zürich, a Stone Age Neanderthal hand axe dated to roughly 100,000 BCE, was discovered here. Schlieren was first mentioned in 828, belonged to the Habsburgs until 1415 and was assigned to the canton of Zürich in 1803. In 1777 the minister Heinrich Keller opened the first school for deaf-mute children in Switzerland here. In the late nineteenth century industrialisation turned a farming village into an urban town, and the good tram and S-Bahn links to Zürich drove growth after the 1930s. The municipality covers 6.6 square kilometres and has the highest share of foreign nationals of any municipality in the canton.