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Olten
Solothurntown
Olten
Total population
17,280
Demographic figures from Swiss Federal Statistical Office. Overview below cites Wikipedia and may reference a different year.
City facts
Overview
Olten is a municipality, a town in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland and the capital of the district of the same name.
Read more on WikipediaHistory & geography
History
Significant amounts of artefacts of the Magdalenian (c. 16'000 to 14'000 years ago) have been excavated near Olten. There are also finds dated to the Mesolithic and Neolithic, but there is no trace of a settlement, and no ceramic finds; finds dating to the Bronze and Iron Ages are also rather limited. There was a vicus at the site during the Roman era. The name of the settlement is not known, but it seems to have been of a certain importance, presumably reflecting the presence of a bridge across the Aare. The Roman settlement was probably destroyed in the later 3rd century. At the end of the 3rd century, a fortification was built at the bridge-head, on the south-eastern corner of the earlier vicus. This fortress was abandoned in the 4th century, and later replaced by a larger castle, comparable to late Roman fortresses protecting crossings of the Aare at Solothurn and Brugg. The medieval settlement was built on the foundations of the Roman castle. It is first mentioned in 1201, as Oltun (conjectured as continuing an *Olodunum, with the Gaulish suffix dunum "fort", and a prefix olo-, possibly from a hydronym, thus "river-fort"). It was in possession of the counts of Frohburg in the 13th century, passing to Kyburg in 1377 and to Habsburg in 1384. Olten passed under the administration of Basel in 1407, which invested in infrastructure, which was however destroyed in fires in 1411 and 1422. Basel lost interest in rebuilding the town again after the 1422 fire, and sold the settlement to Solothurn in 1426. Throughout the medieval period, Olten was little more than a fortified bridge-head with some services (blacksmiths, taverns); its total population is estimated to about 500 people for the year 1600. Olten lost its city rights in 1653 as punishment for its support of the…
Geography
Olten has an area, , of . Of this area, or 12.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 41.9% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 40.5% is settled (buildings or roads), or 4.6% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.5% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 6.0% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 15.6% and transportation infrastructure made up 11.6%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 4.2% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 3.1%. Out of the forested land, 40.7% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.1% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 6.2% is used for growing crops and 5.9% is pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The old city of the capital of the Olten district is located in a bend of the river between the Aare and Dünnern rivers. In the 19th Century housing estates were built in the valley on both sides of the Aare between slopes of the Jura Mountains to the north and the Born, Säli und Engelberg mountains to the south.
Excerpted from the corresponding Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA).
Geography
Coordinates & boundaries from the US Census TIGER/Line shapefiles.
Climate
Air quality
Walkability
Amenities nearby
Wildlife & biodiversity
Earthquake history
Photos
Sights & places nearby
Notable people from here
Nearby places in Solothurn
- Trimbach0.9 mi away · pop. 6,454
- Starrkirch-Wil1 mi away · pop. 1,660
- Wangen1.6 mi away · pop. 4,906
- Winznau1.7 mi away · pop. 1,807
- Dulliken1.8 mi away · pop. 4,765
- Mahren2.3 mi away
- Obergösgen2.4 mi away · pop. 2,151
- Hauenstein-Ifenthal2.7 mi away · pop. 315
- Kappel3.1 mi away · pop. 2,958
- Hägendorf3.3 mi away · pop. 4,702
- Walterswil3.4 mi away · pop. 632
- Däniken3.6 mi away · pop. 2,785
Geography & sun
Elevation, sunrise/sunset and daylight from Open-Meteo. Solar climatology from NASA POWER.
Nearby airports
Public attention
Pageview totals from the Wikimedia Pageviews API.
Books about Olten
Search results from Open Library.
Recent natural events nearby
Ground air-quality sensors
Recently spotted species
Events
Gallery
Official Identifiers
BFS — Swiss Federal Statistical Office
- BFS-Nr
- 2581
- Population (Wikidata)
- 17,133
- Wikidata
- Q68129
Gemeindenummer via Wikidata P771
Sources
- • Wikipedia
- • Open-Meteo / sunrise-sunset.org
- • Wikipedia Pageviews API
- • Open Library
- • Wikidata SPARQL (CC0) — population, area, elevation, inception, head of government, Commons image
- • BFS — Swiss Federal Statistical Office — Gemeindenummer via Wikidata P771