Francs or guilders? In the mid-19th century, this question divided Switzerland. In the end it was the franc, but further dispute erupted over the design of the new national currency.

Too young, too foreign, too different? Fifty years on from the introduction of voting and electoral rights for women, the issue of political participation is still a hot topic. A historical overview of disenfranchisement in Switzerland.

Thousands of Swiss people helped liberate France from German occupation. Hundreds of them were punished by Switzerland. They might now be rehabilitated.

Fishel Rabinowicz (*1924) is one of the last living eye-witnesses of the Holocaust. Switzerland’s acceptance and assimilation of him and other Holocaust survivors was by no means a certainty.

Today, pedestrians almost always have right of way. That hasn’t always been the case. Since the first zebra crossing was installed in Basel in 1948, however, pedestrian road use has become a lot safer.

In 1956 the world was on the brink of a new world war. And right in the thick of it, Switzerland acted as a mediator. But it was a tough job.

Around 1880, women here and there in Switzerland picked up boxing gloves for the first time. With their efforts initially dismissed as circus sideshows, women battled until the 1990s to be allowed to box competitively.

5,000 years ago, people in Europe began erecting stone stelae in the shape of humans. These monuments were likenesses of ancestors that served to unify and nourish the village community through rituals, and legitimised land ownership.