Vernier, Switzerland

Vernier is a municipality in the canton of Geneva in Switzerland, located in the western suburbs of the city of Geneva. Its name comes from the Celtic word verne, meaning alder. Excavations in 1915 uncovered horse and mule shoes from Roman times, and the area later passed through the County and Duchy of Savoy and the Kingdom of France before Vernier joined Switzerland in 1815, when it was a rural place of 566 inhabitants. The Lyon to Geneva railway of 1858 and the Chèvres hydroelectric plant of 1896 began its industrialisation, and from 1955 new housing estates such as Le Lignon and Les Avanchets brought strong population growth. It is divided into six neighbourhoods and had 37,536 inhabitants in 2023.