Pays de Gex
The Pays de Gex is a landscape in the Ain department in eastern France , between the first Jura chain and the Swiss cantons of Geneva and Vaud . It is named after the main town Gex .
geography
The Pays de Gex stretches along the southern foot of the Jura from Divonne-les-Bains west of Nyon to Collonges and Pougny on the Rhone in the far south. It comprises 27 municipalities in the Communauté de communes du Pays de Gex .
The Crêt de la Neige ( 1720 m above sea level ) is the highest Jura peak in the Gex landscape, and the ridge of the Grand Crêt d'Eau forms the southern end of the entire Jura Mountains. The mountain landscape without the larger French villages at the southern foot of the Jura is part of the Upper Jura Regional Nature Park . A pass road leads from the town of Gex at Col de la Faucille ( 1320 m above sea level ) over the high Jura range to Mijoux . The Versoix and Allondon , the more important bodies of water, flow from the Jura slopes through the Pays de Gex and the Canton of Geneva to Lake Geneva and into the Rhone.
The railway line from Geneva train station to Lyon runs along the Rhone through the Pays de Gex and the Collonges Jura.
Mountain landscape at the Crêt de la Neige
the lake of Divonne-les-Bains
Church of St Pierre in Gex
Train station at L'Ecluse fortress , Collonges
history
The area from the Jura to Lake Geneva belonged to the county of Geneva in the Middle Ages and was assigned to relatives of the counts as a paragium . In 1353 the Dukes of Savoy conquered the country and had it administered as Kastlanei .
In the course of the conquest of Vaud by Bern and Friborg , the Pays de Gex came to Bern in 1536 and for a short time became a Welsh bailiwick. With the Lausanne Treaty of 1564, Savoy got the area back, under the guarantee of the Reformed faith introduced by Bern. In 1589/90 the city of Geneva occupied Gex and kept it in their possession even after the end of the war with Savoy.
In 1601 Savoy Gex ceded to France in the Treaty of Lyon , which now forced the city of Geneva to withdraw from the area. The reformed faith was then opposed by France first through missionary measures and finally completely suppressed in 1662/85. Gex was assigned to the province of Burgundy by the French administration until 1789.
Through the Second Peace of Paris in 1815, 6 communities in the Pays de Gex were added to the canton of Geneva in order to provide Geneva with a land connection to Switzerland. These are the municipalities of Collex-Bossy (with Bellevue GE ), Le Grand-Saconnex , Meyrin , Pregny-Chambésy , Vernier and Versoix .
The modern Pays de Gex roughly corresponds to the Arrondissement Gex . The economy is closely linked to neighboring Switzerland and the Geneva-Lausanne metropolitan region, or Métropole lémanique in French . The communities close to the border belong to the Geneva agglomeration and count many cross-border commuters. The nuclear research center CERN and Geneva Airport are partly located in the Pays de Gex.
Web links
- Paul Cattin: Gex, Pays de. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Coordinates: 46 ° 20 ′ 0 ″ N , 6 ° 3 ′ 28 ″ E